“We Have an Anchor!”

Second week of our stay-at-home, you know, mandatory online services. I hope you're doing okay and have made it through fine this week without any complications or difficulties and that you're enduring some of the inconveniences of life these days that are brought on us by this coronavirus and stay-at-home orders and all of that kind of stuff.

A couple of announcements before we look at God's Word together and worship together. Just a reminder about the noon Facebook Live devotionals that I'm sharing every day. I do that every day this week.

Some have mentioned they don't have a Facebook account and they're trying to watch it on their phones connecting through the link that is sent out and they're not able to watch. I understand that Facebook has just developed a way for you to be able to do that.

I think all you're gonna have to do is click on that link that you get from either the email or the text message. You should be able to click on that sometime, I hope, this week. I hope tomorrow it'll be ready to go.

That's a Facebook problem. That's not our problem. That's not something we can really do anything about, but hopefully that'll work for you tomorrow on an Android phone anyway if you can't use any other way.

Still unsure about when we're going to be able to regather. Our desire would be to regather in two weeks on Easter Sunday. We know it won't be next week on Palm Sunday, but I did just see this morning that the state, the governor, somebody is considering extending this stay-at-home order when that decision's this week.

Worshiping the Lord in Uncertain Times

Well, let's worship our Lord together. Psalm 33 verses 20 and 21 say, our soul waits for the Lord. He is our help and our shield, for our heart is glad in Him because we trust in His holy name. I want to share a few hymns together today.

Focus on the idea of hoping in the Lord and our anchor being in Christ. The first hymn is the song Day by Day. Many of you would know that. I just want to share the text while Melissa, appreciate her help again this week, Melissa plays it for us, Day by Day.

Day by day and with each passing moment, strength I find to meet my trials here. Trusting in my Father's wise bestowment, I have no cause for worry or for fear. He whose heart is kind beyond all measure, gives each day what he deems best.

Lovingly it's part of pain and pleasure, mingling toil with peace and rest. Every day the Lord Himself is near me with a special mercy for each hour. All my cares He feigned would bear and cheer me, He whose name is Counselor and Power.

The protection of His child and treasure is a charge that on Himself He laid. As thy days, thy strength shall be in measure. This the pledge to me He made. Help me then in every tribulation, so to trust thy promises, O Lord, that I lose not faith's sweet consolation offered me within thy Holy Word.

Help me, Lord, when toil and trouble meeting, e 'er to take as from a Father's hand, one by one, the days, the moments fleeting till I reach. We are grateful today that we can trust you with each passing moment of every day.

We realize that in this life it's part of pain and part pleasure, that in your providence, in your kindness, in your wisdom, you mingle toil with peace and rest. We're thankful that you are every day near your children.

You have a special mercy for each hour that we live. We are living now in strange days and uncertain hours, but we who know Christ as our Savior, we have our anchor firmly placed in Him. We can trust that as our days are, our strength will be in measure.

This is the pledge, the oath that you have made to us. Now, Father, I pray as we gather together in our homes and here in this place that you would meet with us. You would bless as we worship you together today.

This we ask in Jesus' name. Each week I like to read a psalm, and this week I want to read the first eight verses of Psalm 42. Psalm 42. If you have a Bible and you're following this morning, you might want to follow along.

I'm reading today using the ESV. We'll be doing that in the message as well, but follow along. Psalm 42 says, As the deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, Where is your God? These things I remember as I pour out my soul. How I would go with a throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival.

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. My soul is cast down within me, therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon from Mount Mizar.

Deep calls to deep, the roar of your waterfalls. All your breakers and your waves have gone over me. By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life, his blessing to the reading of his word.

The next song I want to share with you, the text of it anyway, as Melissa plays in the background, is a song, a hymn you may not be familiar with, written a few years ago. It's entitled Christ the Sure and Steady Anchor.

The focus this morning is on Hebrews chapter 6, that we have an anchor for the soul, that's the Lord Jesus Christ. The song is written on the basis of that text. Read it together. Christ the sure and steady anchor in the fury of the storm, when the winds of doubt blow through me and my sails have all been torn.

In the suffering, in the sorrow, when my sinking hopes are few, I will hold fast to the anchor, it will never be removed. Christ the sure and steady anchor while the tempest rages on, when temptation claims the battle and it seems the night has won.

Deeper still than goes the anchor, though I justly stand accused, I will hold fast to the anchor, it shall never be removed. Christ the sure and steady anchor through the floods of unbelief, hopeless somehow, oh my soul, now lift your eyes to Calvary.

This my ballast of assurance, see his love forever proved, I will hold fast to the anchor, it shall never be removed. Christ the sure and steady anchor as we face the wave of death, when these trials give way to glory, as we draw our final breath.

We will cross that great horizon, clouds behind and life secure, and the calm will be the better for the storms that we endure. Christ the shore of our salvation, ever faithful, ever true, we will hold fast to the anchor, it shall never.

Prayer for Missionaries, the Church, and Civil Leaders

As we pray together today, we want to pray for our missionary of the week. This week it's Scott Williquitt. Scott, as you may know, is with the Baptism in Missions and a branch of the mission called the Pastoral Enrichment Program, and his primary ministry is to go to third world countries, places where there are pastors of churches but they have no means whatsoever of gaining like a seminary training.

So Pastor Scott Williquitt and other pastors will go with him to help train these national pastors, go for a couple of weeks at a time. Well, needless to say, because of this global pandemic, all current plans for travel have been postponed or canceled.

So what he's working on right now is preparation for what they call the School of Church Planters. It was scheduled for June, it's now been pushed back to July. He asked us to pray for that preparation, and regarding the uncertainty of it all, that many would still be able to come in spite of these strange days.

And then he also asked us to pray for Victoria, his wife. You may remember she was diagnosed a couple years ago with breast cancer, had some treatment for that, and has some further therapy. But I communicated with him yesterday and he asked us to pray because a couple of those lumps have grown recently and is causing her some pain.

So pray about that situation. And then let's continue to pray for our church family. No one that is afflicted by this illness. Still praying for my brother and his wife who are still awaiting a firm diagnosis and a whole story behind that.

But anyway, we want to pray for them and continue to pray for God's grace to sustain us through these days. Let's look to the Lord in prayer, shall we? And so our Father and our God, we praise you today.

We praise you for your steadfast love, that you sustain your people through the challenges and the upheavals of life. And you have made a promise, you've made commitments covenant with your people. And we can count on you, your steadfast love to fulfill that which you've promised.

We thank you, Father, in uncertain times of global unrest, that you are sovereign. We thank you for your sovereign power. We thank you for your eternal knowledge that nothing that is going on in this world has taken you the least bit by surprise.

It is all within the framework of your knowledge and understanding and your providence. We thank you for your universal presence that we here in this locality can count on you being with us, even as we gather together through the electronic media medium.

But also your people on the other side of the world can count on your presence. You are universally present with your people. And we thank you for that. We also thank you for your personal mercy, for your grace you have in this week sustained us.

And we thank you for that sustaining grace. Thank you for sustaining us through this another week. You've provided for us what we have needed. We thank you, Father, in these days of doing without some of our conveniences and normal privileges and things that we just take for granted.

We thank you that through all of this you are working to tear down, perhaps, the idols of our hearts, the things that we have held on to as being so essential and necessary, and yet we're finding out they're not.

We thank you for our families, for our homes, for the shelter that we enjoy. We thank you for protection even from the storms that went through our area last night, yesterday. Thank you for your sustaining grace.

But Father, we come to you today confessing our sins to you. We confess that through all of this current virus crisis, we confess to you that we have worried too much, that we have waited on you too little.

We confess that we have complained about our inconveniences. We have murmured against those who have brought these inconveniences upon us. We confess that we have lacked gratitude for what we do have.

We have become impatient. For these, our sins, we confess, we ask your forgiveness, and we are grateful that you forgive us all our sins. We do pray today for those in need. We think of the Willikwits, think of Scott and his ministry and how a certain aspect of it is now put on hold and is left uncertain.

I pray that you would bless him in his other preparations and work he's able to do because he is not traveling and preparing for those trips. I pray that you'd help him in that. I pray that the School of Church Planters would be able to be held in July and it would be good attendance.

Pray for Victoria that if it would please you, that you would grant her healing. Father, we pray for those in our nation that are suffering from this virus that can be threatening, life-threatening. We pray that you would give healing to the body.

We pray that the heart and soul would turn to you. We pray, Father, that you would grant us patience in these days, grant us faith to believe and trust in you. Grant us, O Lord, a peace of mind, hearts that are settled and fixed on you, our God.

We pray that you would continue to supply our needs. And Father, I pray that as we see others who have needs, grant us grace to share. We pray that by your grace you would protect our bodies from illness.

We pray that you would protect our hearts from inordinate longing and anxiety. You would protect our minds from fretful speculation and from wasteful obsession. We pray for those in authority over us, our lawmakers, our governor, our president, his cabinet, his advisers.

We pray for these policymakers, that you would grant them wisdom. And I pray that they would have prudence to know how to apply what they know and what they understand to the constituents and to those who are subjected to their decisions.

Grant them wisdom, we pray. We pray in these days, Father, that truth would triumph. We pray that righteousness would reign. We pray that justice would prevail. Our God, we pray, may your kingdom come, may your will be done.

The Assurance of the Better Things That Belong to Salvation

This we ask in the name of Jesus, our Savior. Well, I'd like to read before our message this morning, I'd like to read Hebrews chapter 6 and verses 9 through 20. So Hebrews chapter 6 verses 9 through 20, if you have, again, a copy of Scripture that you can follow along with this passage.

Hebrews chapter 6, I want to read beginning in verse 9 through the end of the chapter. He says, though we speak in this way, and what he's talking about this way is talking about those who have had the opportunity to hear the gospel plenty of times and flat out rejected it, don't want to have anything to do with it, in a final sense, kind of like Judas Iscariot.

He says, though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things, things that belong to salvation. For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints as you still do.

And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who, through faith and patience, inherit the promises.

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.

For 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, so that by two unchangeable things, 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.

We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

Use this passage, I pray today, to encourage us by the truth, through the truth, that we have an anchor. And I pray that we would firmly hold to that anchor, which firmly holds. A couple of months ago now, when the passengers left on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, they were headed on a 15-day voyage, intending to, expecting to go on nice calm seas, taking them to the island paradise of Hawaii.

But before they returned to San Francisco, and the harbor there, they entered the turbulent sea that was churned up by this coronavirus. There was never a question of the ship's sinking. The ship was safely moored in that San Francisco harbor.

But there were 3 ,500 people on board that ship, and they were quarantined, and were not allowed to leave that ship. They were safely anchored as a ship, but were they individually, personally, safely anchored?

The next few weeks for those 3 ,500 people were fraught with anxiety and fear. You see, someone, apparently, on a voyage before that Diamond Princess trip to Hawaii, a passenger on that ship, before that trip, had contracted the COVID -19 virus, and had since died.

That person became the first victim of the virus in the state of California. For those 3 ,500 people on board that ship, one-fifth of them ended up coming down with that virus, 712 of them, and 10 of them eventually died.

Can you imagine the thoughts running through the average mind of the average person confined to that ship, wondering, have I been infected too? Will I ever get off of this ship? Will I be the next victim to fall prey to this thing?

Will I ever see my loved ones again? If you were on that ship, what would your anchor be? What would be the anchor of your soul? Frankly, what is anchoring you, whatever the storm and the turbulence of life?

Well, in Hebrews chapter 6, I mentioned verses 4 through 8. The writer of Hebrews was talking about people who had abundant opportunities to hear the gospel, and they related to it to some degree. But when all was said and done, they utterly rejected it.

They said they didn't want to have anything to do with it. They rejected Christ in a sense of finality, a once-and-for-all thing. And the writer says that there is, for those folks, no hope. There is no anchor for their soul.

But then in verses 9 and following, he says that in verses 9 and 10, he says, I have better things, I think better things of you. He says there are things that we are sure of regarding you, things that belong to your salvation.

So our writer in verses 9 and 10 declares that true believers in Christ, those who have not rejected him with a final rejection, true believers in Christ are not in such a hopeless condition that have no anchor for the soul.

And the writer is convinced of that because their faith in Christ has changed their lives. He says you have this work and love that you've shown in the name of Christ serving the saints, as you still do.

There's this ongoing effect of their faith in Christ that is evident even now. But life happens. The challenges of life come. The storms of life come. Uncertainties like that which we're going through right now, they come.

And life has its ups and downs. And when life has its ups and downs, as it always inevitably does, the life that is part pleasure but also part pain, when that comes, we can waver and we can lose sight of the promises of God and the ultimate purpose of God.

And then we feel maybe anchorless. Haven't you found that to be the case? Well to counter that tendency, the writer of Hebrews then pens in verses 11 and 12 that we desire that each of you would show the same earnestness and have the full assurance of hope until the end.

And then he goes on in verses 13 to 15 to elaborate on that. And what he essentially says in this passage is that you as a follower of Christ have an anchor of the soul that gives spiritual stability throughout your life until the end, as he says here in verse 11.

But to benefit from that anchor, to benefit from that anchor, he challenges us first in verses 11 through 15 to imitate the anchored soul. To imitate the anchored soul. Now again in verses 11 and 12 he shares with us the character of that anchor, of that anchored soul.

The one whose soul is anchored is one who is fully convinced of the gospel promise. He puts it this way in verse 11. They have the full assurance of hope. A full assurance of hope. They're fully convinced, that's what that full assurance is talking about, fully convinced of the promise of the gospel.

And that anchored soul has a lifelong assurance of that hope. They have a full assurance of hope until the end. The anchored soul furthermore overcomes, let's call it a spiritual laziness. A spiritual laziness.

He says here in the beginning of verse 12, so that you may not be sluggish. You may not be sluggish. He used that same idea back in chapter 5 verse 11 when he says this. He says about this, that is the priesthood of Melchizedek.

We're not going to get into that. But he says about this priesthood of Melchizedek, we have much to say and it is hard to explain. And then he says this, since you have become dull of hearing. And the idea here that he references in verse 11, and he doesn't want us to be guilty of in times of conflict, times of uncertainty and upheaval, is that we get spiritually lazy.

Meaning that we fail to seek and to follow biblical guidance in these difficult times. To find biblical truth to help us make important decisions. Biblical truth that will sustain our souls through the difficult times of life.

In troubled times when the sea is churning, we need that kind of earnestness about us to look to the scripture for our for our our settledness, our guidance, and our hope. The anchored soul overcomes that spiritual laziness.

And then the anchored soul also exercises faith in the God who has promised. He says in verse 12, you may not be sluggish but imitators of those who through faith inherit the promises. Exercise faith in the God who promises.

And then finally that anchored soul calmly perseveres in faith awaiting the fulfillment. You have these who have this kind of anchored soul, they through faith and patience inherit the promise. This is the nature of an anchored soul.

Now having talked about that in a you know a very general way, this is what an anchored soul is like. Then in verses 13 to 15, our writer shares with us an example of the anchored soul that will encourage us to be like him.

And he's talking here in verse 13 to 15 about Abraham. Now think about Abraham's life. If you reflect back on the history of Abraham from the time we meet him in Genesis chapter 11 and 12 as he is called to leave Ur of the Chaldees and go to a place that God's designated for him.

From that point until the end of his life, there are a lot of ups and downs in in Abraham's life aren't there? You can think through some of them. But what was the most challenging time for him? What was the most challenging time for him?

It was recorded for us in Genesis 22 when God told him to take his son, his only son, his son of promise, Isaac, and offer him unto God. Now again I'm not going to take the time to go into all of that test of his faith, but he endured.

And that's the focus, that's the example that the writer is going to settle on here in verses 13 to 15. Abraham heard the promise of God, verses 13 and 14. When God made a promise to Abraham, he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself saying, surely I will bless you and I will multiply you.

And that's a quotation from that passage in Genesis 22 where God says to Abraham after he was he obeyed the Lord, he took Isaac up on the top of Mount Moriah, he was willing to slay him because that's what God told him to do, and God's restrained him.

God kept him from doing that and then God told him I will bless you and multiply you. He heard this promise of God. And our writer tells us that what settled that promise was an oath, an oath. He says when God made this promise since he had no one greater to swear, he swore by himself, he made an oath by himself saying, surely I will bless you and multiply you.

And in verse 16 and 17 this should settle it. He says people swear by an oath and this is the oath that God made to Abraham. So Abraham heard this promise of God and when he heard this promise of God, God invoked himself as the witness and the enforcer of that promise.

You see that in verse 13? He had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself. And then what did God swear? At the end of verse, or in verse 14, what God swore and gave an oath to Abraham to do was to bless him, was to bless him.

So Abraham heard this promise. Now this wasn't the first time that Abraham heard that promise. It was a reiteration of a promise that Abraham had heard many, many years before, before Isaac was ever born, long before Isaac was ever born.

God made the promise to Abraham when he was childless and when his wife couldn't even have a child. God made the promise to Abraham, I'm going to bless you and I'm going to make a great nation of you and in you all the families of the earth are going to be blessed and your seed will be as the stars of the heavens in number.

God had made a promise to Abraham. Abraham heard that promise and Abraham waited believingly for that promise to be fulfilled. When it was originally made, it was many years earlier and from the time that that promise was made until he had given, his wife had given birth, Sarah had given birth to Isaac, it was 25 years, 25 years of waiting for that promise to be fulfilled.

But even now on Mount Moriah he's waiting for God to give Isaac back to him. This is what he's expecting, this is what he's anticipating. Later on in the book of Hebrews we're told that Abraham by faith took Isaac up to Mount Moriah believing that God was even able to raise him from the dead and restore him back to himself.

Why? On what, on what basis would he have such a hope? The promise of God. So as he's going up that mountainside and his son Isaac is carrying the wood for the sacrifice and he ties Isaac up to put him on the altar and places him on that altar.

I can't imagine the brokenness of heart that he's asked to do such a thing but at the same time there is a believing waiting upon the promise of God because God had said in this child, in this one, you will have a great nation will come from you.

All the nations of the earth will be blessed in this child. Through this child you will have descendants as numerous as the stars. Abraham believingly waited for that promise of God and then what does our text say?

He obtained that promise, he obtained the promise. Years earlier he obtained the promise of the birth of Isaac and now he obtained the promise of the receiving back of his son. His hand was stayed from the slaying of his son and he was given back to him again.

Now all of this the writer of Hebrews is using simply to give an illustration of an anchored soul that is worth imitating. One who hears the promise of God, who believingly waits for the promise of God and ultimately receives the promise of God.

So if you're going to benefit from that anchor of your soul imitate the anchored soul. Secondly if you're going to benefit from the anchor of your soul I would encourage you to appreciate the stability of that anchor.

Appreciate the stability of that anchor. Notice first of all in verses 16 and 17 that the anchor of your soul holds firmly to the oath of God. It holds firmly to the oath of God. Verses 16 and 17. For people swear by something greater than themselves and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation.

So in verse 17 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. So verse 16 tells us that oaths settle matters.

They settle matters. An oath is considered final for confirmation and God in verse 17 guarantees his promise with just such an oath. He guarantees that promise with an oath and he did so to give greater assurance to those who heard the promise.

See this in verse 17. When he desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise he gave an oath. And who are those heirs of the promise? You. You who have put your trust in Christ. You are the heirs of this promise.

And so God in his grace and in his character he settles the matter with an oath. So the anchor of your soul holds firmly to the oath of God. Then notice also that it holds firmly to the character of God.

And that's critical isn't it? Because an oath is only as dependable or reliable or trustworthy as the one who is making the oath. What is the character of God that we read in this particular passage? Well verse 13 we read that he is the greatest of all beings.

When God made a promise to Abraham since he had no one greater by whom to swear he swore by himself. There is no one above God to whom God could invoke this oath. No one he could say I'm going to make this oath and if if I don't fulfill it then I'm calling upon whom to destroy me.

There was no one greater than he. He's the greatest of all beings. And he does not change his purpose. You see this in verse 17 when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose.

When God purposes something it cannot be changed. You think about that with the purposes or the oaths or the vows that we make as human beings as people among each other. We enter into contracts and then we end up getting into contract disputes and and one party or the other decides to change their mind and they break their vow and there goes the contract.

There goes the purpose that was established months or maybe years earlier. Not so with God. He does not change his purpose. Furthermore he cannot lie. Verse 18 tells us that. So that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie.

Notice it doesn't say you know God will not lie. That would imply that there's a possibility that he could. It says it is impossible for God to lie. So when God makes a promise he makes an oath and he swears upon himself that he is going to fulfill this purpose.

The purpose is unchangeable and because of the character of God it is impossible for him to lie. That promise is actually absolutely dependable. You can count on it. Because God is dependable and can be counted upon.

And then I want you to notice how the character of God infuses the character of your anchor. What do I mean? Look at verse 19. He says we have this steadfast this hope. The last part of verse 18 he's talking about.

We have this hope as a sure and steadfast anchor. A sure and steadfast anchor of the soul. The anchor of your soul is sure because the oath of God settles it and he doesn't lie. The anchor of your soul is steadfast because his purposes never change.

The character of God infuses the character of the anchor of your soul. So you need to appreciate the stability of this anchor for your soul. It holds firmly to the oath of God. It holds firmly to the character of God.

And then I want you to notice in verses 19 and 20 that it holds firmly to the work of Christ. It holds firmly to the work of Christ. And look at the look at the way the writer here makes an equation. He says in verse 19 this hope that is set before us.

We have this hope as a sure and steadfast anchor. A hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain where Jesus has gone as the forerunner on our behalf. What he is saying is simply this. The anchor is our hope who is Christ.

Christ is the anchor of your soul. And the work of Christ that anchors your soul is his gracious sacrificial work of redemption. It's alluded to here at the end of verse 19 when it says this hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain where Jesus has gone.

That's explained for us in chapter 9 verses 11 and 12. Chapter 9 verses 11 and 12 it says this. But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come then through the greater and more perfect tent not made with hands that is not of this creation he entered once for all into the holy places not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood thus securing an eternal redemption.