Hebrews: The New Covenant Administration of Christ Max A Forsythe (c) Anno Domini 2002

From the Pulpit at Pilgrim's Rest Presbyterian Church in America

The Economy of God’s Promise
For the Lord’s Day:  the 2^nd of November 2003

Hebrews:  6: 13-20

“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.”

Introduction: We must divide this passage into three sections.  The first three verses (13-15) form the introductory statement about oaths and promises. And the second three (16-18) define precisely the two unchangeable promises given to us by God the Father.  The final two verses (19-20) will lead us on to introduce the next whole chapter which will finally focus on the New Administration of our Lord Jesus Christ being explained in this letter.

John Owen makes a telling point to help us understand the complexities of the argument here:  “God’s promise made Abraham the person he was.  In general, promises are the specific declarations of the grace, goodness, and purpose of God toward people, for their good.”

At supper, earlier this week I was reading an article about the importance of parental expectations for the educational success of their children.  While one ethnic group may by heritage demand at least a C- in all classes, another group may demand a B- and still another may expect nothing less than an A-.  Children, the researcher explained would usually respond to the minimal expectations.  Of course, we all know that parental expectations are not the absolute determining factor in every sense of the word, the cultural climate and increasingly the peer group mentality encouraged by educators has also a profound effect as well.

However well founded those theories may be we are talking about something greater in the generation of faithful adherents to the love and law of God.    Because, as we should have already learned – God is not surprised at how people turn out.  The lives of the Old Covenant saints should demonstrate this beyond a shadow of a doubt!

To illustrate the ready and apparent grace of God’s adoption of the elect, our Apostle here begins with the foundation of Abraham’s hope in order that we too might appreciate the same eternal foundation for our own.  In this regard then, Abraham is held up as our spiritual father.  F.F. Bruce explains:  “the example of Abraham, as father of all who have faith in God, was invoked in many strands of primitive Christianity.  Even before the Christian message began to be proclaimed, John the Baptist pointed out that something more than biological descent from Abraham was necessary for acceptance with God;  God did indeed desire ‘children of Abraham’, but if need be He could bring them into being by His own creative act.”

Indeed, the life of Abraham shows us that it is only God who can work out the details of His promises.  Abram & Sarai began as an ordinary couple of humans.  In point of fact, they would not have been welcomed in gentile society of the last century – since they were step-children having one father but different mothers by Abram’s own admission.  To the credit of the Holy Spirit’s work, Abram did follow the call of God and wandered through the region of Palestine seeking the promised rest for his soul that the good Lord Himself engineered.

As Abram aged, and failed in his mind to obtain the promised son, he and his wife made several arrangements, both purposeful and humanly providential – all in order to obtain the promised son.  They were both as good as dead in their own estimation, when the promised heir was born.  And then as the child grew – there was one final test:  would Abraham sacrifice his one and only son by the Lord’s command.

It is after that subsitutionary atonement of the wild ram, that the promise in this passage is credited.  John Brown argues the evidence for this:  “God made a number of promises to Abraham, some of them referring to temporal, and others of them to spiritual blessings – some of them relating to himself personally, and others relating to his posterity, either natural or spiritual.  Which is the particular promise referred to here, it is not difficult to discover.  It was a promise confirmed by an oath; and the only promise with which this description agrees is that which was given to Abraham after he had proved his devotedness to God, by laying his son Isaac, in obedience to His command, on the altar.”

In Genesis 22: 16- 18 we read the reference in mind here:  “’By myself I have sworn, declares the LORD,a because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. … and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.”

John Brown explains the significance of this evidence to the current and ongoing argument.  “It does not appear to me that the Apostle, in quoting the promise here, meant to fix the attention of his readers on the contents of the promise, or to reason from its import, but merely to state the facts.”

Here is our first teaching point for the morning: the promises of God are to be depended upon for all time!  His word is sufficient in every time and place because He is proven reliable over and over in the Old Covenant context.

Development:   Further, John Brown argues: “These words convey this general idea:  ‘an oath by God – an appeal to Him, is the highest kind of assurance which can be given by one man to another of the truth of his declaration and the sincerity of his intentions.’”

With that declaration we move our focus from the first three verses to the last five.  And here commentator John Brown would argue that the interlude in the arguments of this letter is concluded and that the arguments regarding the promises being discussed should focus back to the context of chapter five wherein the Melchizedek example was beginning to be stressed.

This is his justifying argument:  “To this conclusion I am led by attending to the context and the train of thought.  Every one must see that there is a close connection stated, as existing between this divine oath and the abundant consolation and firm hope which it is calculated to produce, and the constitution of Jesus Christ ‘a High Priest after the order of Melchisedec,’ mentioned in the last verse” of this chapter.

Secondary to this argument is another “The high importance of the constitution of Christ’s high-priesthood by an oath is afterwards more particularly illustrated in the 20^th, 21^st, and 28^th verses of the next chapter; and we know it is according to the Apostle’s usual method to notice cursorily what he intends by and by more fully to discuss.”

Both Owen and Bruce end up by agreeing the last verse in this chapter regains the argument left off in chapter five, verse eleven.  But only Brown argues the immediate context of these last five verses to the fulfillment of the oath and promise contained in Psalm 110: 4.

Let us follow Brown’s thinking here because there is a profound discourse in this whole letter aiming to wean the Old Covenant Church to the new administration and even constitution of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Just as there was a grand and glorious improvement from the unspoken republican democracy of the English system to that of the American foundational documents, so is there a Covenantal divide between the Old Covenant Church and that New Covenant in the sacrificial blood of our own High Priest:  Jesus Christ.

What we are getting at is that in the context and content of verse sixteen through eighteen (and let’s read those again):  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. 

Please notice the phrase “so that by two unchangeable things.”  Listen to John Brown’s argument to the meaning of that phrasing:  “The two immutable things have commonly been said to be the promise and the oath of God.  I cannot doubt they are the two oaths: the oath to Abraham – the word of the oath before the law, and the word of the oath since the law in the 110^th Psalm.”

Here is our second teaching point for the morning:  the “two unchangeable things,” are the oath and promise to Abraham and the oath and promise to David.  Remember, we have throughout the whole Old Covenant an unfolding of the promise, kingdom and priesthood of the greater Son of David:  Jesus Christ.

Application:  I know that this book and chapter are difficult, and I have had to struggle with the depths of meaning here, even as you must have patience with my poor ability to simplify and explain what is going on in the glorious complexity of the arguments before us.

Now, we must move on to consider our last two verses for today, the nineteenth and twentieth.  And here there is something dear and sweet for the soul in the verses here.  John Brown observes that “’the hope set before us’ is just the expectation which the Gospel testimony warrants us to entertain.”

The two absolute covenant promises confirmed by the oath of God should give us personal confidence that the keeper of our souls wills us to count our hope in Him in concrete terms.  This is all the Apostle is saying in these last two verses:  “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.”

John Brown encourages us to consider the personal implications of this statement:  “The salvation of those who come to God through Christ is thus as certain as the destruction of those who, by continuing in unbelief, will not come to God by Him.  Both are secured by the oath of God.”

John Owen encourages us to see this hope in a biblical frame.  “The commonly held idea about hope, that it is seen as being something that is dubious and uncertain, is quite wrong.  Hope springs from faith as it places all its expectation on the good things in the promise.  The essence of hope is that it trusts in God.”  Some years ago, we had a visitor who interrupted out services, the elders escorted him to another room where they heard his demand that we pray for his lottery tickets to be winning ones, since he had placed all his few resources and immediate hopes on winning back his investment and then some.  The focus of his hope was so deluded that we could not persuade him to a better, more certain hope in what Christ has accomplished.

The Apostle is here arguing the classic conviction that the Old Covenant record which demonstrates all that the Creator God has done in the past is nothing more than the best reason we have for giving over our future and all that we are to His kind and providential care.  Think of it this way, were we all in the helpless situation of America’s own Helen of Troy:  Jessica Lynch – wouldn’t we be grateful for the Iraqi legal advocate who risked everything he was and had, to bring about our rescue?  Now, we can look back at this situation with the hindsight of the recorded news and now know that rescue was a done deal, even before it happened.  We are saying nothing more than this.

And our last teaching point for the morning is this:  our legal advocate before the Father has already made the arrangements for our eternal well being.  We are safe in His hands even in our current helpless condition.  The old promises so vividly demonstrated in the revelation record are adequate enough to make our spiritual rescue absolutely assured.

After all, our advocate:  Jesus Christ, the only Son of the Most High God has passed through the curtain into the heavenly holies to make all the final arrangements and to pray us through to the end of our lives.  F.F. Bruce recalls the gospel assurance:  “I go to prepare a place for you.”  And then he assures us in these strong terms:  “the errand of this Forerunner embraces far wider ends than that of preparation.  It proclaims an accomplished work of redemption and signalizes the first fruits of a mighty aftercrop.  … He is there [in glory] as His people’s forerunner, the surety of their admission to the dwelling-place of God;  He is there, too, as their perpetual high priest, ‘after the order of Melchizedek’.”

Let us all make certain of our confidence in Him who has called and gone on ahead to prepare and guarantee our place in eternity.  This is the blessed hope of the Puritans to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that for all of eternity – we belong to our Lord Jesus Christ.  May that blessed hope be ours today and always.  Amen.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

PREACHING RESOURCES
Brown, John.  A Geneva Series Commentary: Hebrews.
Brown, Raymond.  The Bible Speaks Today: The Message of Hebrews.
Bruce, F.F. The Epistle to the Hebrews.
Owen, John:  Commentary on Book of Hebrews.
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Permission granted to redistribute unedited versions with this notice.
http://www.tulip.org/tac/heb057.htm
To Subscribe or Unsubscribe go to:  http://www.four.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/ccrlist/