His Promise My Anchor (Hebrews 6:12b-20- Jeff Kliewer)

Opening Worship and Church Announcements

Your name. Every blessing you pour out when the darkness closes in, Lord, still I would be the name of Blessed be your name. Every blessing when the darkness closes in, Lord, blessed be your name.

Visiting us, everyone welcome. I have a couple announcements. So, first off, once again, if you're new, despite all the craziness of 2020, we are helping to plant a church over in the Rancocas Woods area.

So, the Rock Church is its name and Pastor Ben is over there and they're in their third week. So, continue to lift up Ben and all those that are attending there as they keep moving forward. They had their soft open three weeks ago and they're opening on Easter as their big push and their big opening.

So, just as they're dealing with all the new things, they're adding technology and things every week. So, just pray that things would continue to go well there and that people would just be reached with the gospel message up there in the Rancocas Woods area.

We have a women's ABF class that has started a couple weeks ago, the Book of Galatians. Kimberly Ellis is teaching that during our the first service hour. There's also a Thursday night. This is the last Thursday night, right, Kimberly, at seven o 'clock.

There's a Zoom link for that as well if you can't attend and a lot of that information is in the pastorgram that Pastor Jeff sends out, but Kimberly's here. You can talk to her if you're interested in joining that class.

We also have our nursery is fully up and running again. So, if you have young children, you can check them in. We have teachers that are teaching the curriculum to stepping stones. So, we're happy to get that up and running, which we didn't have going during our summer time when we were worshiping outdoors.

So, anyone that has children, you can get them in there. We also have a Wednesday Isaiah study that's taking place. They just finished Lesson 17. That's a study that's going to be going on for a while and all of those are taped and put on our YouTube channel.

So, if you can't attend on the Wednesday, you can also go and review that and learn the lesson through YouTube. As Michael had mentioned, our starting point class started week two. Last week, John had 17 and the number today was 18.

Okay. So, we're expecting that to continue to rise. It's probably the biggest class that we've ever had. So, we're just praising God that there are so many people that want to come and join and be a part of Cornerstone Church.

So, pray for them as they go through that class. Tomorrow, we have a congregational meeting at seven o 'clock. And so, if you want to come and see what a congregational meeting looks like, we're going to be voting in six new members tomorrow.

And we're also going to be presenting some information about Tim Robinson, who is our new youth leader. He's also going to be taking and running children's ministry. So, we have a few things that we need to vote on tomorrow.

So, it's just a different type of worship service. Seeds of Hope, which is a ministry we help to serve. John Dottoli is our point guy for Seeds of Hope. They're in need of some drawstring bags. So, if you have any lying around or would like to donate a box, you can bring those to church and we'll make sure that they get those.

And then finally, it's tax time. So, your contribution report should be out in the foyer. You can pick that up today. If you don't pick it up, we'll just mail it out to you. So, you can look for that when you go out there.

Prayer for Worship and the Preaching of Hebrews

All right, let's pray. Dear Lord, we thank you for this day. Lord, we thank you for the beautiful sunshine, even though it's cold outside. We're thankful that we can be in here to worship you. We're thankful that we have that freedom to come and do that.

Lord, we just ask that you would bless the Rock Church as Ben is about to preach soon. Just ask that your name would go out in a mighty way there. We ask the same here as Jeff preaches from the book of Hebrews, that we would just be changed and molded by the words that we hear.

That we would come to know you in a deeper way. That we would love your son Jesus. That we would want to share his name with those that don't yet know him. We'd ask that you be with us as we continue to lift up your name in our song.

And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

We're going to sing some songs together again. If you could stand with me. Lord, we welcome you here.

This morning. The all-powerful God. Jesus, we pray that your presence will be among us as we sing, and as we listen to Pastor Jeff present your word to us.

There is a truth older than the ages. There is a promise of things yet to come. There is one born for our salvation. Jesus. In the body. Our death. But in between is the dash. The question is,.

What are you going to do with your dash? If you're a follower of Christ, there are pains. There's lots of joy. And there's hope. If you put your faith in Jesus Christ, your dash can be filled with lots of joy.

Because we have that hope of our. His life, Pastor Tom's life, was just always giving to the furthering of the gospel. The past song, and even this song that we'll sing, is one of those songs that just reminds me of him and his life.

And the example he was in my life. Living that dash. But you are not in your ordinary seats.

Many of you have moved, and that has me confuzzled. That's a good thing. I love it. Let's pray. So Father, we are so thankful for your grace toward us. It's all of grace. We bring nothing to the table but our sin.

And you have brought that lamb. On the mount of the Lord, it will be provided. And indeed, you have provided for our salvation on the hill called Calvary, where Jesus bled and died to purchase our salvation.

So we thank you as we look to Christ this morning. We thank you for that hope which is sure and kept in heaven for us. It is no ordinary hope like the world has. It is a living hope. A sure hope. One based on the living Savior who has gone behind the veil in the Holy of Holies in heaven, keeping our salvation there.

And we thank you, Jesus, for what you have accomplished on our behalf. This morning, we pray that you would help us to trust you. Help us to hold on, even as you are holding on to us. Thank you for your amazing grace.

Grace that's greater than all our sin. Thank you, Jesus. And we look to you now in your word, asking that you would speak to us. We are listening. In Jesus' name, amen. Tim Chalies is a blogger, an online guy.

You can go to chalies .com if you'd like to read some of his material. I like him because of his book reviews. He will do some of the reading, so I don't have to. And tell me if it's a good book or not.

But Tim Chalies, wonderful Christian pastor, has been for many years. Got married at age 20. Had kids and has been pastoring for decades. He wrote these words a couple of days ago. As we gaze into the future, as we imagine what may be, we are far better at projecting grief than grace.

The future we imagine and the future we begin to feel is far more often bleak than lush, far more painful than promising. The fantasies we conjure up are of harm, not help. Of sorrow, not support. Ed Welch says it well, worries are visionary.

Worryers are visionaries minus the optimism. Anybody relate? Worryers are visionaries minus the optimism. Now, Chalies goes on to say, I am not particularly prone to worry, but when I do, I tend to worry about my children.

They are, after all, my foremost God-given responsibility. And they are, after all, what in all the world is most precious to me. Some recent ruminating on the matter has shown me my tendency to imagine a future in which I know only loss, only pain, only sorrow.

I've been that visionary worry wart who sees a future of evil, not good. Of sorrow so deep it displaces all joy. It has taken the loss of one of my children to help me understand the degree to which my imagination has been faulty, to understand that it only ever projected a very small, very inaccurate part of the reality.

Losing a child is more painful than I ever could have imagined, but God's grace in it has been more constant than I ever could have imagined. The loss has been more grievous, but the joy has been more present than in any fantasy I could have ever conjured.

I never would have foreseen the ways in which God's promises have been proven true, the ways in which he has comforted us by his spirit and his people, the ways in which we have been upheld by prayer, in which we've been encouraged by words of truth and acts of love.

I had eyes to see some of the pain, but little of the joy, to see much of the grief, but so little of the grace. My imagination was faulty in what it foresaw, and faulty in what it failed to foresee. Tim Challies, just in November, went through the dreaded and most horrible thing you can imagine, the loss of his 20-year-old son.

Nick, at age 20, was studying at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary to become a pastor. He was in a five-year program. He was also engaged, expecting to be married just younger than his dad, Tim, had been married at age 20.

So his fiancee and he were planning the wedding, and without having any underlying conditions, just unexpectedly collapsed, and in a second was gone. This happened, I think, in November, just months ago.

Tim Challies testifies that even in the midst of the most horrible loss, there is an anchor in heaven that keeps the Christian soul, and somehow there's been joy even in the grief. There's been comfort in loss.

He writes these words, one more sentence, we know there will be grueling days and sleepless nights ahead, but for now, even though our minds are bewildered and our hearts are broken, our hope is fixed, and our faith is holding.

Our son is. Those are the words of a Christian. Those are the words of a man who knows the God who resurrects the dead, a man whose hope is not in the things of this world, but in the eternal realities and the things to come.

The anchor of the Christian soul is the unbreakable promise of God. This is the example of a man who trusts in the promises, something that all of us need to be reminded to do. This morning, we'll see the promises of God, what undergirds those promises, what gives the basis, and in fact, that God himself has reiterated his promise with a pledge, his oath, to make it more sure for us.

The Carrot and the Stick in Hebrews 6

Let's see this in Hebrews chapter 6, verses 12 to 20. Turn with me there, if you will. As we locate ourselves in Hebrews 6 and the second half of verse 12, we have to understand what's been said so far.

The author of Hebrews was about to teach us about Melchizedek and how that relates to Jesus Christ as the great high priest. But before going down that road, he took a time out and he needed to rebuke his audience for not really being aware, not being alert.

They had become sluggish in listening, and so the author calls them to attention. And after getting their attention and telling them they need this meat and not just milk, he rebukes them and then warns them.

I call this the proverbial carrot and the stick. You familiar with the carrot and the stick? When you want to motivate somebody, there's really two ways to do it. One is a stick. You goad them with a stick, you smack them, and that'll get them running like a horse, right?

If you goad a horse, that thing's going to take off. That's the stick. But the carrot can also motivate an animal to run. You put a carrot out in front of an animal and it will chase that food because it's anticipating something good.

It wants to obtain something good. Well, Hebrews chapter six is the proverbial carrot and the stick. Only the stick came first, now the carrot. So last week was the hard part where we are warned. We are warned of the possibility of falling away.

And it is scary to think that someone can taste the heavenly gift and the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come and yet still fall away unto eternal destruction. Sobering passage.

It is the stick to warn us to hang on to faith and to press on in the doctrine and not be content where you are, to be moving forward lest you drift and fall away. But the author does not want to leave us insecure.

He does not want to leave us trusting in our own ability to hold on. Rather, he reminds us of the promise now and this is the carrot. This is the joy set before us. Remember in Hebrews 12, Jesus endured the cross for the joy set before him.

He was looking forward to the reward. And as Christians, we are to look at the things that are promised to us because that is part of how he's holding us. So let's look at the promises. We are in Hebrews 6 verse 12.

The first part is a reminder not to be sluggish and now we move on to the positive. So that you may not be sluggish but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. What is the difference between the Christian hope, faith, Christian faith versus what the world calls faith?

You know like in the song, you gotta have faith, faith, faith. What are they talking about when the world says faith? Basically what the world means by faith is anything that you can't see. And everybody has their own faith and that's equally valid for them.

If you can't see it, it's just something that you are wanting to be the case, that's faith. It's something that involves sincerity. If somebody is sincere in their faith, whatever it is they believe in, it's not seen so it's a private interpretation and that is faith according to the world.

Not according to the Bible. We will learn about faith in the hall of faith in Hebrews chapter 11 when we really study that more in depth. But here understand, faith is taking God at His promises. Faith is taking God at His Word.

God first has to say something and then faith is when we agree with what He has said, we believe it, we rest on that. If He didn't say it, then it's not faith. It's just something you want to be the case, a vain hope, an imagination, pride.

Faith is taking God at His Word. So notice here, we are to be imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. So let us review. God has given us great and precious promises. Second Peter 1 .4 says that He has granted to us His precious and very great promises.

What are some of those promises? You know, as a preacher of God's Word, it often occurs to me that when I sit down to write a sermon, this will probably be, maybe not, but probably be the only time I will ever preach this particular passage of scripture.

John MacArthur preached for 50 years and went cover to cover. So each passage had one shot. This is my one chance to communicate to you the preciousness of these words. And for some of you, this might be the only sermon you ever hear on Hebrews 6 verses 13 to 20.

Now I would encourage you to go listen to a John MacArthur or a Votibachum or an Alistair Begg, a good theologian that teaches God's Word, and hear many sermons on this passage. But it's a precious promise, something on which we can rest and stand.

What are the promises of God? Let's review a few of them. In Romans 4 verses 24 and 25, we're told faith will be counted to us as righteousness when we believe in Him who raised Jesus from the dead. In John chapter 9, I'm sorry, chapter 10 verse 9, Jesus claims to be the door.

Jesus said, I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved. And we'll go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but I have come that you may have life and life more abundantly.

That's the promise of God. John 11 25, Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. That's the promise that Tim Chalies is standing on today.

And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this? It's a promise. Romans 8 32, he who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

Matthew 6 33 is a promise, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Isaiah 41 10, fear not, for I am with you. Be not afraid, for I am your God.

I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will uphold you in my righteous right hand. Promises of God. Let's read another promise from Revelation chapter 21. Go with me there. You want to know what's promised to the believer, to the Christian who believes in Jesus who was raised from the dead?

Follow along as we read from the ESV or you can any translation. Revelation 21 1 to 7, this is what's promised to us who believe. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more.

And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.

He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.

And he who was seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new. Also he said, Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. And he said to me, It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. To the one who conquers will have this heritage and I will be his God and he will be my son. These are the promises. Great and precious promises are given unto us.

A heritage to those who believe and who conquer. That refers to those who hold on and continue to believe the promises. For outside are the dogs and the cowards, the sexually immoral, the murderers, those whose part is not in the eternal kingdom.

Those who believe and remain conquerors, receive a heritage. That is what's promised. That's the reward that's held out to us. Isn't it good? What could be better than this promise given to us? So the first thing, return now to Hebrews 6, we're in verse 12.

The first thing is to recognize that our hope and our faith, faith is the assurance of things hoped for. Our hope is fixed on promises. It's not just arbitrary. It's not imaginary. It's not what we ever, whatever we want it to be.

It's what God has promised us. So let's put some, some flesh on those bones. What does that look like? What does it look like to trust the promises? Answer, Abraham. He's the one we should imitate. Look at 13 to 15.

For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying, surely I will bless you and multiply you. And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise.

Now in first service, I couldn't resist. I made a little joke out of verse 14. Surely I will bless you and multiply you. Abraham would answer, thank you, but don't call me Shirley. You guys laughed as much as they did, but notice Abraham is the example.

When I was in seminary, one of my assignments, because I was a youth pastor at the time, was to prepare a youth curriculum from Genesis 22, the story of Abraham offering Isaac. Flip back real quickly to Genesis chapter 22, verse 16.

This is the verse that's quoted here in our text today, where God swears by himself. By myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, I will surely bless you, verse 17.

Okay, that's what's in view when Hebrews is teaching us about this. So back to my story. When I was in seminary, I had to prepare assignment on Genesis 22. So I wrote this youth curriculum as a lesson for Genesis 22, and here's what it was all about.

How Christ is the fulfillment of this story. I mean, think about it. Abraham offering Isaac foreshadows Christ in amazing ways. It's the father offering his only unique son in a human sacrifice, and they travel together on a donkey just as Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey.

Do you see the parallels? And they climb a mountain to offer the sacrifice, just like Jesus had to climb the mountain called Golgotha. And the son lays down willingly, offering himself willingly, and the son carries the wood of his own sacrifice.

Just like Isaac had that wood to burn the offering, and he said, father, here's the wood, but where's the sacrifice? On the way up, he didn't know. Well, Jesus carried the wood of his own sacrifice. And when they got to the top, Isaac was not to be the sacrifice.

There was a ram caught in the thicket, that substitutionary ram that pictures Jesus, and that quote from Genesis 22, on the mount of the Lord, it will be provided, verse 14. God will provide the sacrifice on the mount.

So here's the point. My professor took my curriculum, he looked at it, and he gave me a B. I thought that was A material right there. Come on, look at that. All the parallels to Christ. That's amazing.

Just like mind-blowing stuff. Why did he give me a B? He said, yes, that's beautiful, and that's right, and that's figuratively pointing to Christ. But you're missing the point of Hebrews. You're missing the New Testament application of this passage.

Hebrews 6 doesn't just present this as foreshadowing Christ. It says Abraham is our example. You need to teach the teens to have faith like Abraham. Make it practical. Show how Abraham is an example of holding on to promises.

He was right. I mean, the text is right, so that's why the professor was right. So I got a B, and I learned there are lessons in the life of Abraham that we need to hear. Number one, the promises of God need to be reviewed again and again.

You see, in Genesis 22, verses 16 and 17, that's not the first time Abraham heard it. If you go back and read the story of Abraham, it begins in Genesis 12, verse 1 and 2, the very promise that we're reading here.

Go to the land that I will show you. I will bless you and make you a great nation, and all the earth will be blessed in your seed. And then again in Genesis 15, with the smoking fire pot going between the pieces and what Galatians picks up on, Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.

The promise is repeated in Genesis 15, and then again in Genesis 17, when God changes Abram's name to Abraham. You see, the promises of God are sure and steadfast, but our minds are not. We need the review.

We need to keep going back into the promises, hearing it again and again and again, just like Abraham. Just like Abraham received a new name. Christian, you have received a new name. One of them is saint.

You are a saint. Don't pray to saints. God says you're the saints. You're the holy ones, made righteous in Christ. Take your new name. You are a child of the one true king, like the song says, a child of God.

And we're even told that when you get to heaven, you're going to be given a white stone with a new name written on it, that no one knows but God and you. You're a child of God, like Abraham. But the third lesson from Abraham's faith is a counterexample.

You see, Abraham was given the promise, and he had to wait a long time. Many of you are struggling to hold on in the Christian faith. It seems like the promises of good things are so distant, but the temptations and the struggles are now.

And some of you might even say, wrongly, that it was easier before you were a Christian. Now that you became a Christian, things are harder. Well, maybe circumstantially that could be the case at times, because the promise is things future, and it's hard to wait.

But see, Abraham waited patiently, not all the time. There was an event in Abraham's life where he tried to take matters into his own hands, wanting the son of promise, but his wife was still barren. And so he went to Hagar, the slave girl, and had a son named Ishmael by Hagar.

That is an example for us not to follow. You see, very often we want to short circuit the process of waiting, and we look for an easy way out to satisfy the flesh, instead of waiting on the better things that God has.

And we actually bring pain into our lives, don't we? Abraham experienced that pain. Ishmael and his 12 tribes became the Arab people. And even to this day, Arab and Jew are at war. Much pain brought in because of that suffering, because of disobedience.

However, good news, even though that point of weakness in Abraham's life, where he tried to take matters into his own hand, and in a sense he was kind of letting go of God to do things his own way, God still held Abraham.

The promise was sure. The covenant was unconditional. That's, by the way, why the firepot passed through the sacrifice. When you read Genesis 15, Abraham didn't walk through. It was an unconditional covenant.

God made this covenant sure, irregardless, if that's a word, of what Abraham would do. You see what I'm saying? Unconditional covenant. God was holding him. Good news. So we take from Abraham's example how we are to hold on to the promise.

Review the promise. Go back and hear it again and again. Remember who you are in Christ. Your identity in Christ. And don't short-circuit the process. Move on now with me in Hebrews. That's the example of Abraham.

God's Unchangeable Purpose and Promise

Now we have kind of the big idea of the passage, and that is that God made an oath, which is interesting. Does God need to make oaths? No. If God says it, so it is. Who are we to say, well, God, I'm not sure I trust you.

Can you make an oath so that I can know that you're trustworthy? You see, humans are not trustworthy. Let God be true and every man a liar, the Bible says. Consider the oaths that we make, the presidential oath of office, marriage oaths, all kinds of oaths that people take.

As a minister, there's been two occasions where someone who took an oath in marriage turned around and decided that they were no longer married. I'm aware of two situations like this. In one case, I was involved as one of the leaders of the church, and a woman said because they never took the paperwork for the wedding ceremony and turned it into the court, they were never married.

Now she admitted they stood before God and man and made an oath till death do us part, but she says because they never turn in the paperwork, they're not married and she's free to go off with another man.

Want to know what I said to that? Get out of here with that. No, I don't know what I said exactly, but the point was I did not accept that reasoning because biblically the marriage oath is when you stand before God and man and you pledge solemnly in the name of someone greater than yourself.

You pledge and make this oath based on someone higher than yourself, and it's binding. You can trust it. It's a sure, steadfast oath. Well, in the case of God, there's no one greater by which to swear than himself, and so we're told here God swore by himself.

Look at verse 16. People swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes, an oath is final for confirmation. So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise, the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath.

Now that, of course, refers to Genesis 22 where God had already told Abraham that he will bless him. Now he comes in and says, I swear by myself this will happen. He affirms it with an oath. For whose sake?

For his own sake? No. Look at verse 17. To show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise. This is God condescending to our weakness. How frail we are to believe the promises. He comes in to show another unchangeable thing, so that by two unchangeable things, the fact that he first of all said it and then that he confirmed it with an oath, we would know that we will receive the promise.

Now we are in Abraham's promise. All the nations of the earth shall be blessed through his seed, and Galatians teaches us that that seed is Christ. So we enter into that promise given to Abraham, and then we have that made more sure as God reaffirms again and again.

Have you ever wondered why it is there are so many promises in the New Testament? He wants us to stand on those. He wants us to be sure that he can be trusted, and he wants our trust. That's what he's after.

He wants faith, and faith is taking him at his word. So this is what pleases God. The one who reads the promises and believes them and rests on them. Okay, so the promise is what God says. After that promise comes an oath, which makes it more sure.

But watch this now. There's something before the promise that is the basis of what God says to us. Promises are given in real time when he says them, and he's given us his word. That's his promise. But there's something antecedent to that, the basis upon which promises are made.

Look more carefully at the text. What did God want us to know for sure? Answer, the unchangeable character of his purpose. Now, we could spend 45 minutes easily on that word, boule, in the Greek. Matter of fact, we just did that on Wednesday.

Isaiah chapter, I mean, Isaiah lesson 17, if you want to go on our website. I taught on this subject, and for all of my going on and on, coming up with the best words I could, when it was over, John here gave us a sentence that summed it all up better than everything I said.

He quoted R .C. Sproul. You had to go to Sproul, didn't you? Which is beautiful. Sproul summed it all up in like a sentence. You want to know what it was? There is not one maverick molecule in all the universe.

Interesting quote, huh? Maverick, what does maverick mean? Like a renegade going to do its own thing. Molecule, the smallest particle. There's not one maverick molecule in the universe. What did R .C. Sproul mean by that?

It means that before anything existed, before there was time, when all there was, was Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in the mind of God, there was purpose, boule, a purpose for everything that shall ever come to pass.

And that includes the painful things, the sinful things, the evil that will come into the world, and the purpose behind those things that God will allow. Where do I get this? Is this kind of made up out of thin air, some theology book?

No, Ephesians 1 .11 uses the same word. God works all things. If you go to Ephesians 1 .11, you can circle that word all, so that you don't miss it. All things according to the counsel, the boule, the purpose of his will.

So the teaching of scripture is that God has a purpose and a plan. I'm no R .C. Sproul, but I gave you my own little quote. It kind of goes on and on a little bit, but here's how I say it, if I can find it.

It says, however bad it was, it's in your notes, however bad it was, there's no changing that it happened. But denying that God ordained it, makes it impossible to find God's purpose in it. In other words, everything that happens in this world, which includes terrible things, no matter what we believe about those things, and God, how he relates to those, no matter what we think, we can't change the reality of what happened, can we?

We can't change it. However, most Christians deny that God has a decree, that God has a purpose and a plan from eternity past. Most Christians will deny that, thinking that they're protecting God from some accountability.

There is a latent deism in the minds of most Christians. Deism is the idea that God created the universe and then spun it into existence, like winding up a clock and then he stepped back and certain things just happened because that's just the nature of things.

And he can't help it. Maybe there's a free will of an individual that God's not allowed to violate. It's just the natural course of things and God can't help it. And this deistic thinking has God kind of on the sidelines, without a purpose.

Now, I know this is deep theology, but this is important for your life. If you believe what the text says right here, so that we would know the unchangeable character of his bullae, his purpose, that he has a purpose in everything.

If you believe that, you can trust him to work it all together for your good. He allowed it for a reason. It was part of something. Second Corinthians 4 .17, that this light momentary affliction is achieving for us an eternal weight of glory that far surpasses everything here.

There are eternal realities that are greater than the temporal suffering. And Romans 8 .28, God works all things together for good to those who love him and who are called according to his purpose. This is very important.

That's why I say, like, I only get to preach this one time. I don't want to miss this. I don't want you to miss this concept in verse 17. You may not be able to grasp it just at a once-over flyby level, but go back and watch lesson 17, which is on Isaiah 10.

And that's where we bring in so many other scriptures to make sense of this, how free will fits in together with the decree of God. Wasn't this what the author was talking about at the end of chapter 5?

I have much to say, but you're dull of hearing. If you say, I don't want to go that deep, it's not because your mind isn't capable. It's because you don't want to go that deep. If you take the time and you listen again and again, the Lord will bring understanding.

And so we move on. That is the purpose of God, so that by two unchangeable things, verse 18, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.

This is an encouragement. The promise is an encouragement that we would hold on, not give up, but keep moving forward, hanging on to the hope that we have in Christ. And now the last point, verses 19 and 20.