Hebrews 6 and the Promises of God (Part 1)

Hebrews 6 as a Promise-Keeping God Passage

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, ministry.

My name is Mike Abendroth. And you can get a hold of us, info at nocompromiseradio .com. Typically we have the show�s format set up this way, and that is Mondays. It�s a sermon preached at Bethlehem Bible Church, Bethlehem Bible Church.

And that is bbcchurch .org, if you want the website, 2 b�s, 2 c�s, bbcchurch .org. Tuesdays, I usually talk to Tuesday Guy. Pastor Steve Cooley. Wednesdays, I try to interview authors, theologians. I don�t know if I�ve done that lately, but I�m going to have Chris Gordon on the show soon, and Chris Gordon is on my podcast list.

I love to listen to Chris Gordon preach. He�s in Escondido, California, Thursdays. I guess the old format used to be teach something kind of K-lovish, positive, encouraging radio. What is confession?

What is Christology? Something like that. And then Fridays, it used to be called Doghouse Fridays, and so I�d take people to the theological doghouse. I don�t know what we call things now. Anyway, I did just hit Facebook Live.

There is a no-compromise group, and I think you have to ask to get in and prove that you�re not a Seventh-day Adventist. And then you can get in. So, I think I�m recording that now. I don�t know if anybody can get on this or not, but I�m just going to record it just for the fun of it.

Why You Don’t Want to Be Ripped Off on Eternal Life

I was thinking the other day about things in life that, you know, things that rip you off in life. And maybe you get ripped off because you bought something and didn�t look at the fine print, you know, kind of scams.

And I was thinking about bicycle jerseys you can buy online, and if a typical bicycle jersey is $70, $80, $100, and you can find it for $18, you know, there�s a problem. And the problem is usually me.

That is, since I�ve got greed, I want to go for something cheap, and cheap always isn�t the best. I would imagine if you bought a life insurance policy, you expect to have it cashed, and then if it was bad, it didn�t have the backing, that would be awful.

There are things that you expect to deliver in life and don�t, and if it�s, you know, small stakes, fine. But if the stakes are higher, you want to make sure that you have the proper understanding of what you�re getting into.

You know, if you had a health insurance policy, and somehow your health insurance didn�t work out, and you had to pay for it out of pocket, that�d be a big rip-off. Well, how much more to use the language of preaching?

When it comes to eternal life, you want to make sure you don�t get ripped off. You want to make sure you don�t get stiffed. You want to make sure that you don�t get conned. Remember con artist, bunco artist?

Remember the bunco squad? Remember the Untouchables with Eliot Ness back in the, I don�t know, �50s? Was that when the show was originally aired? Who played that? Who played Eliot Ness? Oh, I forgot. Anyway, someone will email me, and then they will tell me who that is, and by then it�ll be too late because I�ll already be off to the next thing in my life.

Here�s the good news. When it comes to eternal life, spiritual things, God�s promises are true. He�s not going to rip you off. This is not a con game. This is not bait-and-switch. God, based on His own character, as a triune being who is perfect morally, perfect in virtues, perfect in character, He can be trusted.

Therefore, as we�re looking at the book of Hebrews today, your Savior, Jesus Christ, the High Priest, can be trusted with your eternal life. You can trust Him with eternal life, with your soul. If there�s anything you don�t want to get ripped off on, it�s your soul.

You can imagine how Satan, the deceiver, the liar, the ultimate bunko con artist, would try to rip you off. He might rip you off with saying, �You know what? If you are going to believe, make it a shallow belief, an intellectual-only belief, an emotional-only belief.

Don�t make it a real trusting, a hearty trust. Don�t do that. But here, we find in Hebrews 6 that the hope of your salvation, the hope of forgiveness, the hope of eternal life, it�s certain, and it is certain because it is directly related to God�s promises, and God keeps His promises.

Remember, years ago, promise keepers, and seven more laws for you to break. I promise. That�s like Deuteronomy, doesn�t it? All these things we will do, you know, curse it as a man, you know, amen, amen.

Just more laws. Some of them had some roots in the Bible, of course, and some of them didn�t. The other day, I got onto promisekeepers, I think, dot org or dot com, dot con. I didn�t say that. Yes, I did.

They�re still around, and they�ve got kind of truncated promises, updated promise keeper stuff. I don�t know if they have big events anymore. I don�t think they have big stadium events, but some theological fads are slow to die off.

Assurance, Faith, and the Promises of God

But today, we�re just going to talk about the hope of future salvation is certain because when you believe, God has said, �If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be saved. And so, when you believe, you will be saved.

And this writer in the book of Hebrews is going to look at Abraham as the father of all who believe. Remember that song? �Father Abraham had many sons. Many sons had Father Abraham. I am one of them, and so are you.

So, let�s just praise the Lord right on. Stand up. I don�t know the end of that, but that�s like the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men. That�s liberalism. I think we have to amend the song.

�Father Abraham had many sons. Many sons had Father Abraham. I am one of them, and so are you, if you believe. So, let�s just praise the Lord right on. Stand up. Sit down. God is going to keep His promise.

And He says if you come to the Son, come to Him through the Son, He�s never going to cast you out. That�s called security. That�s called guaranteed salvation. If I was from Nebraska, I would say that�s guaranteed, guaranteed.

Don�t waver in your belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. He�s going to keep His promises. He�s not a swindler. He�s not a bamboozle. How do you say that? Bamboozler? Bamberboozle? Believe it or not, it�s Saturday, and it�s about 4 .40 p .m., dark already.

I think it�s dark now at 4 .14, and I haven�t talked a lot today. I�ve talked a little bit today, but not a whole lot. So if you haven�t talked for a while, you kind of have to ramp yourself up and warm yourself up.

That�s what I�m doing right now, and I have the Facebook Live thing on, and usually there are people on here saying, �Hi there. You know, �Stop it. �Speak, speak nicer, nicerly. 2 Corinthians 1, verse 20,.

�For all the promises of God find their yes in Him. That is why it is through Him that we utter our amen to God for His glory. Everything about the Lord Jesus, when it comes to promises, we find that God is faithful, and the promises of God find their yes in Him, according to the ESV.

And so the book of Hebrews has been trying to establish the fact that Jesus is greater, that Jesus is superior to everything and everyone, whether it�s prophets, angels, priests, Aaron, Moses, whomever it might be.

Jesus is the great high priest, and that�s really the theme of the book of Hebrews, probably an expansion of Psalm 110, that Jesus is a priest after the order of Melchizedek. And priests, of course, remember, had lots of duties, highlighted by two specific ones seen in the book of Hebrews, �satisfaction� and �intercession.

Satisfaction, that is, satisfying the wrath of God as a, not just a priest here, but a priest who offers a sacrifice, and that priest happens to be the sacrifice, and then that sacrifice was accepted, the Son was raised, and now that Son intercedes as a priest, right?

Priests sacrifice, offer sacrifices and pray in the Old Testament. Jesus offered a sacrifice Himself and then now prays because He is alive. In Hebrews 6, challenges people that have false faith, in chapters 6, 1 through 8, is basically dealing with people that are not trusting in Jesus.

They have less than saving faith, and that was a shocker to me, to realize that there�s a faith that doesn�t save. When I first became a Christian, to know that fact, that was wild. In the first few verses talk about you can do religious things with ABCs and elementary doctrines and foundational works and still not be saved.

There�s nothing Christologically unique in these verses in chapters 6, 1 and 2. The writer recognizes that this is under the sovereignty of God. You�re not saved by your own power or will, verse 3, if God permits, that�s the language.

And if you hear people run their mouths and are charlatans and say, �God, we allow you to come into this place. God, we give you permission to do such and such. I mean, when people talk like that, they have not a clue of even the elementary things of the Bible because you don�t permit God to do anything.

You don�t allow Him to do anything. You don�t invite Him to come into your presence. He needs a special permission. You know, He needs a hall pass to come close to you or your congregation. I mean, when you hear people talk like that, as Christian people, then we give some allowance for immaturity.

Don�t we? We don�t expect new Christians or maturing Christians to perfectly talk, right? I�ve tried to make a difference between laymen, laypeople, laywomen, people, I sound like Biden-Reagan, and leaders.

When leaders talk this way, �We allow you, God, to do such and such. No, the language is flipped around. If God permits, whether it comes to maturation and to salvation by believing or maturation as saved people, it�s all up to God.

And salvation is not just as simple as having some type of religious Judas experience. After all, Israel had lots of experiences in the wilderness, and they didn�t make it in, right? Only the young ones made it in.

And so there�s verses 4 through 6 that talk about Judas-type, Simon Magus Acts 8 type of closeness that you could have, maybe even a common grace type of experience that you have. But it�s not enough, because these people, they�ve come this far, and it�s not been enough, so it�s impossible for them to repent.

So that�s kind of an update of where we�ve been in the book of Hebrews. And there�s an agricultural illustration afterwards about fruitfulness and fruitlessness. And then he moves right into chapter 6, verses 9 through 12, and let�s just, let me read those today, and we�ll talk about the verses that follow so you can continue trusting your soul to a faithful Creator who does what�s right, that you can trust in the promise-keeping God.

�Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved�, and he never calls unbelievers beloved. I don�t think any place in the Bible are unbelievers called beloved. But now he�s, after warning people, he�s talking to the Christians.

�We feel sure of better things. Everything in the book of Hebrews, better, better, better, better. You better, you bet. �Things that belong to salvation. In other words, verses 1 through 8, nothing there was specifically salvific, savingly salvific.

Who talks like this? But these things we�re going to talk about, they are 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.

You know, God notices. We see the fruit. We see the evidences of your salvation. This is not the legal standing that you have. This is the evidence or fruit. I just had a swipe up here because that means I�m getting texts.

My daughter just said that she made it to work, so I was glad she told me. And we desire, each of you, to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end. And here we have talked on the show often about subjective assurance and how that follows objective assurance.

The objective assurance, chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in the book of Hebrews, what Jesus did and who He is, and now subjectively as we work out our salvation, if we show earnestness, we experience that full assurance, �so that you may not be sluggish.

That was the point in chapter 5. They were numb. They were sluggish. But instead, �Imitators of those who through faith, that is, through faith in the Messiah and patience, inherit the promises. And He is going to, He the writer, is going to have you recall someone who was having to put their faith in the Messiah, in who God was and is, and had to wait a while to inherit the promises.

But the whole point here is that the promises of God are true. The promises of God don't fall to the ground, to use a different language. There's faithfulness and fidelity in the promises of God, and you can trust your eternal soul to this God.

Maybe you're listening today and you're not a Christian. Lots of people have ripped you off and maybe you were, I mean, there's all kinds of abuse and neglect and all kinds of things given to us from religious leaders to educational leaders to parents.

I mean, there are a lot of people who are very wicked in this world, and it makes people suspicious. But you don't have to be suspicious when it comes to Creator because He is immutably holy, immutably perfect.

He never changes. And you can trust your eternal soul to God's proven, trustworthy character. You can trust in the high priestly work of Jesus Christ. God's promises are true and can be trusted, even though your circumstances might seem to contradict that fact.

You hold fast to the hope that's set before you. So troubled Christian, you need to rest in God. You can trust God with your eternal soul, even though you're going through whatever you're going through now.

And that could be large or small, or you could be in a peak or in a valley. You can still trust the Lord. And that's what the drive...that's what the passage is driving at. That's what the driver is passaging at.

Verse 18, I know I said that, so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge, and here's what He's after in terms of the response of the reader, the listener of this epistolatory sermon, might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.

That's what He's after. These people who got this letter were getting persecuted, probably haven't died yet, but some of them have been thrown into prison, lost their homes. Keep trusting. Keep believing.

Now, these other people, they're going to turn their back on the Lord Jesus. It's like they're holding Him up to contempt again, and it's like they're spitting on His face saying, crucify Him, crucify Him, but you, we know you're a different Christian because you've been serving the saints, and you've been earnest, and you have been showing evidences and fruit of your salvation, and I want to remind you of someone that you will be very familiar with, Jew, Jewish person, and that is Father Abraham.

Abraham, he believed in the promises of God. He kept trusting in the promise-keeping God, and therefore, if you're to imitate his faith, that doesn't mean his faithfulness, just read chapter 13 of Genesis, I read that this morning thinking Abraham could have been a lot more faithful in life, but the object of his faith couldn't be more faithful because he is ultimately faithful, and his name is Yahweh, and we know Yahweh the Father, Yahweh the Son, and Yahweh the Holy Spirit.

God is trustworthy, and he goes through the rest of this chapter, chapter 6 in Hebrews, just extolling great things about God. It would be enough, would it not, if the text just said, God said, if you trust in the Son, you get eternal life, okay?

He said it, does he need to say anything else? I promise, I'll keep an oath, I'm telling you the truth, Jesus is a refuge, he's an anchor, he's a forerunner, and that's exactly what he does. And for my outline, I'm just using six descriptions of who God is to demonstrate his trustworthy character.

All right, if I was going to preach this, and I'll preach this tomorrow, six descriptions of who God is to emphasize his trustworthiness, so your faith is bolstered. He's a promise keeper, he's an oath maker, he's a truth teller, he's a refuge, he's an anchor, and he is a forerunner.

Therefore, you can trust in who God is, in spite of your circumstances. And let's just call a spade a spade, let's call a club a club, let's call a diamond a clover. What's a clover? Wait, wait. What's a clover?

Let's see. Diamonds, clubs, awards. Oh, if you're not careful, this show is going to make me look like this, and for those of you on radio, I just held up a picture of Louis Burckhoff. Oh, Louis, Papa Louis.

Abraham is a good example of someone who had to really think about the object of his faith and rest in him and trust in him and patiently wait. There was an expectation because when God promised the great promises to Abraham, they didn't happen right away.

Eventually, Abraham had to wait. And you can imagine, for your life or these people that receive the book of Hebrews, they were having to wait too. They weren't immediately taken out of their trial or whatever they were going through.

God’s Oath to Abraham and the Certainty of His Promises

And what we're going to do now is look at this first one, a promise keeper. You can rest and trust and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ because God, the triune God, He's a promise keeper. Verse 13 through 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.

When I was looking at the Greek, it was blessing I will bless you and multiplying I will multiply you. And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise. So that section right there is talking about God is a promise keeping God.

As you remember, as you recall, as you reconsider, Genesis chapter 12, 15, 17, 22, we have the promise of God to Abraham, and he's going to be a father of many nations. He's going to have lots of children and the earth would be blessed.

And of course, we know the ultimate seed of Abraham, the Lord Jesus Christ. But you've got Genesis 12, 15, 17, and 22, a promise that's reiterated. I mean, just think about the graciousness of God there.

God could just tell Abraham something, or He could give him a promise, or He could reiterate the promise in a variety of different ways. Here, we know that these people understand who Abraham was. The author, I think, likes Abraham a lot, and of course, you can like Abraham a lot too.

He's not the hero of the story, but he's someone that we can certainly relate to. This author in the book of Hebrews talks about Abraham 10 times. Luke talks about Abraham 15 times, and John talks about Abraham 11 times.

But if you add those three books up, 15, 11, that's 26, and another 10, 36 times Abraham is used in Luke, John, and now the fifth gospel, as we call it, the book of Hebrews. And when you read these New Testament books and other books that talk about Abraham, you will see God's promise tied in with Abraham.

Regularly, you'll hear Abraham discussed and the promises of God discussed as well. This is not a biblical book because there are some things in it that are incorrect, but the Talmud, it says, Moses said before the Holy One, Blessed be He, sovereign of the universe, had sworn thou to them by the heaven and earth, I would have said, just as the heaven and earth can pass away, so can thy oath pass away.

Now, however, thou hast sworn to them by thy great name. Just as thy great name endures forever and ever, so thy oath is established forever and ever. And, quote, God's promise is based on His character.

There are foundational principles tied, the ground of the blessings would be the character of God. And we have this illustration here with Abraham and Genesis chapter 22, God swears, He affirms the truth.

And this has happened quite a bit in Hebrew so far, has it not? Hebrews 3 .11, as I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. Verse 18 of Hebrews 3, and to whom did He swear that they should not enter His rest but to those who were disobedient?

Hebrews 4 .3, for we who have believed enter that rest. Just as He said, as I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest, although His works were finished from the foundation of the world. And then later in chapter six, we'll see it again, chapter seven as well.

Lots of swearing for oaths in the book of Hebrews, and how does God phrase it? He swears by Himself, isn't that interesting? That reminds me of Isaiah chapter 45, verse 23, I have sworn by myself, the word has gone forth from my mouth in righteousness and will not turn back, that to me every knee will bow and every tongue will swear allegiance.

You can imagine the Jew hearing that, I've sworn by myself, I've swore by myself. God's word is certain, and God, as some writers talk about it, condescends and uses language so Abraham, and then the writer's audience, book of Hebrews, and you can be bolstered, and it says in verse 14, surely I will bless you and multiply you.

Now the question for next time when we come back on No Compromise Radio, what Bible verse, what Old Testament Bible verse is that? From where does that come from? Whence does that come? This is Mike Abendroth, this is No Compromise Radio, we're looking at Hebrews 6, great is thy faithfulness, God's promises can be...

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 10 .15 and in the evening at 6. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.