HEBREWS 6 STRONG EXHORTATION TO HOPE IN GODS PROMISES2025 Teaching by Jerry B Simmons

Teaching Transcript: Hebrews 6 Strong Exhortation To Hope In Gods Promises

You are listening to FerventWord, an online Bible study ministry with teachings and tools to help you grow deeper in your relationship with God. The following message was taught by Jerry Simmons in 2025. As we look at Hebrews chapter 6 this morning, I've titled the message, Strong Exhortation to Hope in God's Promises.

Strong exhortation to hope in God's promises. Now, as I say strong exhortation, don't expect that that means I'm responsible to give you a strong exhortation. No, what this is really referring to is the Lord saying, I give you strong exhortation. That is, the Lord has for you a strong exhortation to you. He desires for you to have great hope in the promises that he has given to you.

Now, as we talk about hope and promises today, it's important to understand, right as we get started here, that promises from God are usually not fulfilled in a straight line.

And what I mean by that is it's not usually that you get the promise of God here, let's say, and then the fulfillment of it is here. And the way you get from here to here is just, you know, one step, open one door, and it's smooth sailing, and then boom, you have the full promise that God has given. Usually it does not happen that way. Usually there's a little bit of a journey involved. And I heard an illustration this week that really kind of stuck with me. I want to share it with you and try to walk with you through it as we work through the passage today.

If you can imagine in your mind a coil, a coil laid out horizontally. And if you don't know what a coil is, imagine a slinky laid out horizontally here, just like right here. And at the start of the slinky is the receiving of the promise. And at the end of the slinky is the fulfillment of the promise. But to get from the start to the beginning, you travel the path of the coil.

So it's not a straight, flat, smooth ride. It is up and then down and then under and then you twist and then you come back up and then down. And there is this circle and cycle and this ups and downs and twists and turns that happen all along the way.

And as we'll see as we consider a few examples this morning, that is very often how the promises of God are fulfilled in our lives. That it's not immediately a straightforward first step, easy journey. Many times there is this process and it can be long and it can be challenging and it can be quite confusing sometimes. And that's why God wants this morning to remind us to have strong exhortation, to hope that

that those promises will be fulfilled. I started a little bit of a journey this week myself. Not quite a promise from God journey. It was a promise from the dentist journey.

Many, many years ago, 20 years ago, I had some extractions done on some of the back molars that I used to have, and I couldn't afford at the time to replace them. And the dentist has been kind of reminding me. And so finally, okay, it's about time. The dentist is telling me, look, we have the best molars.

person for this. They can do the implants. It's going to be great. They're the best that, you know, you won't even feel a thing. It's going to be amazing. And so finally I agreed, okay, let's go ahead. We'll deal with this. And so this week began this journey. Now I didn't walk out of the appointment on Thursday with new teeth because that's not how it works. The promise is at the end, there's going to be new teeth where there was no teeth before. But

The process is a little bit of a journey. And in fact, on Thursday, this last appointment, boy, that was probably one of the most painful dental experiences that I have ever had. And it was quite a challenge to stay in that chair, not to punch the dentist and to endure the things that they had in store for me and still recovering from that today. So hopefully I don't talk or sound a little bit too funny for you.

But I didn't walk out of there with new teeth. I started the process there, and there was a little bit of a journey. I had to walk up this. I had to get through that. And then now I'm on the downward side. I'm recovering from that. But you know what? I go back in two weeks, and I'm still not going to have new teeth. That's just for some checkups and for some other things. And then...

after I wait a few months of more recovery and more things, then I get to go back and experience more pain. And then after that, then I get to go back and eventually, you know, I've paid the contract, the contract has been signed, the promise has been made, it will come to fulfillment.

But it just doesn't happen. I wish it could, you know, but it just doesn't happen all at once in one simple procedure. In a similar way, the promises of God for us are real. They are for sure. They are definite. But we need to be encouraged to hope in the promises of God because of the journey that is required to get there. It's not a straightforward journey. And so the word hope, I'll define it this way for you.

Hope is a confident expectation that God's promises will be fulfilled. That's what we're talking about today, that God wants you to have a confident expectation. Oftentimes today we use the word hope with lots of uncertainty. If you play the lotto, perhaps you might say, I hope I win, right? Now the amount of uncertainty in that word hope is significant when you're talking about the lottery, right?

But when we talk about hope biblically, there is no element of uncertainty. It is an absolute, guaranteed, a confident expectation God will fulfill his promises.

The only thing that is in question is when. It's not right now. I haven't experienced it yet, but it will take place at some point. I do not know when. And so it's not a straight line, an easy trip, and not an easy journey all the time, but it will be fulfilled in God's timing. Now, I don't know if you have any promises already in your mind or on your heart from the Lord.

And so I want to just share a few, just to give a little bit of an example, maybe something you can grasp hold of to consider as we walk through this this morning. I'm just going to share a few promises out of Romans chapter 8. Of course, there's many more that we could look at. Maybe there's some personal promises you have, but just in case you don't, here I'm just going to kind of rattle through these. Romans chapter 8, verse 1, there's a promise that there is no condemnation to you who are in Christ Jesus.

that there is no wrath, no anger from God, no condemnation to those who have received Jesus. Now, that's the promise. The reality is, as we walk through this life, we don't always feel that way. Sometimes we might wonder, am I experiencing condemnation? And is God angry with me and done with me and upset with me? And as we go through the journey, we're kind of going through the ups and downs and the twists and the turns, right?

we can often begin to struggle in this. And God would encourage you, take strong exhortation to hope. This is the promise of God. There is therefore now no condemnation to you in Christ Jesus. Romans 8, verse 11. We have the promise that you will be resurrected just as Christ was resurrected. The Holy Spirit who resurrected the Lord is in you as a believer in Jesus, and you will be resurrected, and you have the promise of eternity.

You have the promise of everlasting life with God, no matter what your circumstances look like, no matter what your feelings may be, or what you may be thinking, or what you may be struggling with. As a believer in Jesus Christ, you will be resurrected just as Christ was. That's the promise, and you can have great hope and confidence in that. Romans 8, verse 18 says,

Paul tells us there that suffering earns for you a far better future glory. That in eternity, the glory that you will have as reward for the life that you lived here will far outweigh the things that you may have had to endure in this life. Romans 8, verse 26 says,

The promise is that the Holy Spirit helps you pray in your weaknesses. When you're struggling, when you're at the end of yourself and you don't even know how to pray, you don't even know what to pray for, you don't know what you should bring before the Lord, you don't even know how to make words that would correspond with what you're experiencing, the promise is the Holy Spirit helps you as you pray and intercedes on your behalf with the Father.

Romans 8, 28, one that we all know, all things will work together for your good to those who love God and are the called according to his purpose. You have this promise that no matter what you experience in this life, no matter what circumstances you encounter, no matter what your emotions may be, no matter what state your mind might be in, that God is going to work all these things together for your good, for good in you, good through you.

Romans chapter 8 verse 29. The promise is you will be conformed to the image of Jesus. And you might look in the mirror many mornings and think, boy, I don't think that's ever going to happen. Look at this temper that I still have. Look at these issues that I still struggle with. I don't look anything like Jesus. I don't behave like him. My character is not the same as his character.

But the promise is you're going to get there. You will be conformed into the image of Jesus. And then finally, Romans chapter 8, verse 38 and 39, we have the promise that nothing can separate you from God's love. Nothing can separate you.

It may not always feel that way. You may not always come to that conclusion, looking at your life and looking at your circumstances. But listen, you have strong exhortation from the Lord to hope in his promise. He guarantees it. Nothing can separate you from God's love. Now, thinking about these promises maybe raises some questions for us as we walk through this spiral, this coil, and experience the ups and downs and twists and turns of

We might be thinking, but what if I have lost my temper for the hundredth millionth time? Surely there's the possibility that this promise won't be fulfilled. But no, God's promises are not determined by you or by your success or failure in your endeavors. They're based upon him and his word and his faithfulness. What if I haven't been good about attending church?

Well, that's not, I mean, it's important and God calls you to it, but that is not the determination of whether or not God's promises will be fulfilled. What if I haven't read the whole Bible or haven't been good about reading through it regularly?

What if I haven't been born again? Well, here's the one thing. If that's your question, if I haven't been born again, if you are not a believer in Jesus Christ in that way, well, that is the one thing that you must change immediately. And I would encourage you to do so today if that is something that you need to take care of, because it is as a child of God that we have all of these promises.

And the children of God have this inheritance from the Lord, and we can hold on to and have great exhortation to hope in the promises of God. And so as we walk through this today, I'd like to share three points with you to help us have this strong exhortation from the Lord. Here's point number one. Diligently hope in God's promises until the end. Diligently hope in God's promises until

Until the end. We're going to start here in verse 9 and 10 this morning. It says in verse 9, But beloved, we are confident of better things concerning you. Yes, things that accompany salvation, though we speak in this manner. For God is not unjust to forget your work and labor of love, which you have shown toward his name, in that you have ministered to the saints and do minister.

Now, we're not going to get into the details here of verse 9 and 10, really, but they set the stage for us a little bit to give us some context to dive into the rest of the passage. The book of Hebrews is written to a group of Jewish believers.

And this group of Jewish believers, they were seriously considering turning back to Judaism. They were raised, of course, in Jewish culture, in following the law, in walking with the Lord through the old covenant and the temple experiences and the sacrifices and all of that. But they came to faith in Jesus Christ. They heard of the Messiah. They believed the reality of his death and resurrection and received Jesus as their Lord. But...

Things were not shaping up the way that they kind of hoped and expected. It was their expectation, perhaps, that Jesus was going to be returning very soon. And now a couple years have passed, a couple decades have passed, and how come the Messiah hasn't come back yet? How come Jesus hasn't returned and established his kingdom? And there began to be some restlessness amongst the group as a result.

At the same time, they were also experiencing persecution from the world. The Roman Empire was beginning to apply some pressure, and there was some persecution and opposition from the world around them as a result of their faith in Jesus. And at the same time, more personal to them, they were experiencing persecution from their Jewish brethren.

And so there were those who that they grew up with and they were friends with that they loved one another. But one turned to Jesus and one did not. And now there's this division within the community of this fighting and oppression between them. And so here this group of people is there. They're struggling through some things and disillusioned a little bit disappointed and things aren't shaping up the way that they thought.

And so the author of Hebrews is writing to them to say, look, I know you're tempted. And it seems like turning back that way and going back to the old ways would solve so many of your problems. But you need to understand Jesus is far superior to that old covenant and that old covenant is no longer valid anyways. And so going back to that has no value and cannot save you.

And so Hebrews chapter 6, as it begins, really begins with a strong warning to these Hebrew believers that you can't, there's no salvation there. You can't go back to the law and find forgiveness from God in that way. And so instead, the author of Hebrews says, look, you've been moving forward. You follow Jesus. Don't go backward now. Keep going forward.

forward. And now we pick it up in verse 11. It says, and we desire that each one of you show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope until the end, that you do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

He says, look, guys, there's a journey and there's a coil that you're wandering down. You're going through. And yes, you thought Jesus is coming back and he's going to establish his kingdom and that it is going to be fulfilled. But on the way there, yeah, you're going to be disillusioned and there's going to be some opposition. There's going to be some challenges. But you have a choice to make, the author of Hebrews says. He presents the choices in verse 11 and 12. You get to choose between two things. You get to be sluggish or you get to be diligent.

That's your choice. And that's the choice for each of us to make. Notice in verse 11, he says, and we desire that each one of you show the same diligence. He makes it very personal. This is not a group decision. All right, we'll just, you know, pick a few key people and we'll vote for them and they'll make the decisions for us and we'll just go along with whatever they say. No, each one of you have to decide what are you going to do

With this hope that God has given, this promises that have been delivered to you, will you be diligent to the full assurance of hope until the end? Or will you become sluggish and back off and slack off in your spiritual life and in your walk with God? And of course, the exhortation is be diligent. Diligently hope in God's promises until the end. And the until the end part is sometimes a bit of a challenge, right?

He says at the end of verse 12, These two things are required for the inheriting of the promises, for the hope that God has for you. Faith, believing God at his word, and patience. That is, waiting a long time. How much time? How much time it takes.

For God to bring you from the beginning to the end, whatever coils there may be, whatever twists and turns and ups and downs there may be, you must continue to trust God and wait for him to fulfill his promises. And to help us do that, you can look at examples. He says, imitate those who've done that. Imitate those who through faith and patience have inherited God.

the promises. And in a couple of chapters, Hebrews chapter 11, the author of Hebrews will present a host of people that you can imitate. If you need some good examples, you can walk through that. The hall of faith, it's called. And it sets before us examples of those who have believed the Lord, were given promises from God, and walked through their life through all kinds of different circumstances to receive the fulfillment of those promises.

But you could also look around and maybe there's some people in your life who've already demonstrated through faith and patience inheriting the promises of God. And so perhaps there's some people in your life that you can use to encourage yourself and to think about and maybe spend time with and counsel with that you could be encouraged to walk through the life that has been set before you, that you might receive the promises that God has given to you.

Another example you might consider, as I understand the church has been reading through the book of Exodus this week, Exodus 4 through 9, looking at this portion where Moses is sent to Egypt to call Pharaoh to release the people, to let my people go, that they might worship the Lord in the wilderness.

And in that passage, in those chapters, we see Moses, there's the burning bush, the great call from God and his promise, I'm going to deliver my people out of Egypt. What a great promise. They've been in bondage for hundreds of years. And Moses begins this journey. The Lord appears to him at the burning bush, starts there. The promise is people are going to be delivered out of Egypt. They're going to be taken into the promised land. But as they begin the journey, it's not a smooth, straight line.

If you read these chapters this week, you'll remember in Exodus chapter 5, after one of his first few encounters with Pharaoh, Moses comes back to the Lord and he's crying out a bit and he says, Lord, why have you brought trouble on this people? And why is it that you have sent me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done evil to this people. Neither have you delivered your people at all.

Moses is challenged here. He's going through some ups and downs and twists and turns. He's upside down. He's confused. Lord, you told me to go and you told me you would deliver your people. But since I have come and done what you said, things have gotten harder and the people are in more trouble and they're more challenged and they're more difficult, experiencing more difficult things. You have not delivered your people at all. Well, God responded in Exodus chapter 6.

And he reiterated the promise. He says,

God gives the promise at the beginning. It's not fulfilled immediately. Moses is going through the coil just like the rest of us. Not quite what I expected. I was hoping for a nice smooth ride and things would just happen and the Lord's in it. So it's going to be easy and great and everything flows together. But most of the time, God's promises are not fulfilled in a straight line. There's this journey that we must walk through. And in the midst of it, God reiterates and restates, no, this is the promise. I am going to do this.

But there is going to be some hurdles along the way. What did God do in the end? Well, we have the benefit of looking back. The book is written. We know exactly that God did everything that he said. He did bring the people out of Egypt. He did bring them into the promised land that he had promised to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. He fulfilled his promises, every detail, every word. Not one has fallen untrue. Everything he said.

In between, though, Moses being called and given the promise to the children of Israel arriving in the promised land, there was some challenges. In deliverance from Egypt, the children of Israel experienced some of the plagues along with the Egyptians. For the first few plagues, they experienced the lice. They experienced the flies and the frogs. They experienced all those things happen to them, too.

Now, later on, God made a distinction and showed Pharaoh, look, I'm doing this on Egypt and preserving my people from the plagues. But at first they had to go through some of the same things the Egyptians were going through. As they first get delivered, they get trapped at the Red Sea and they're fearing for their lives as Pharaoh's army is racing after them. They get crossed the Red Sea and they're in the wilderness and experiencing hunger and thirst. They go through times and seasons of unbelief and they're questioning God and rebelling against God.

They go through 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. But in the end, God fulfilled his promise, did exactly as he said, and brought the nation into the land of promise. And so the author of Hebrews says, Look at these examples.

understand you're not the only one. It's not just you who received the shock that things didn't just fall into place and happen easily because God told you to do it or because God was in it. Understand there is going to be some challenges. There is going to be some hurdles. There is going to be some ups and downs and twists and turns. And as you understand that, diligently hope. Be diligent.

to fix your eyes on, to lay hold of the promises of God until they are fulfilled. Pain and disappointment in our lives can be paralyzing and discouraging, and it can make us want to run away and pull back and soften our approach in pursuing after God or relationship with God. We can get in our lives stuck in anger and bitterness and depression because things did not work out the way that we thought and did not go as smoothly as we wanted.

But look at those who've gone before. They have experienced similar things, the same things, and with faith and patience, they inherited the promises of God. And so you can grasp hold of one, like Romans 8, 38, nothing can separate you from God's love. And you can grasp hold of that promise and understand, yes, even if I've lost my temper for the hundredth millionth time, even if I've failed in this way or that way,

Lord, I believe in you. I believe your word, and I believe that your work in me will be brought to completion because you said it would be true, and nothing can separate me from your love. So diligently hope in God's promises all the way until the end. Well, secondly, we're going to look at verses 13 through 18. Here's point number two. Patiently hope because it counts double when God promises.

patiently hope because it counts double. Did you know that? It counts double when God makes a promise. That's what the author of Hebrews presents here. Let's read verses 13 through 18. It says, "'For when God made a promise to Abraham, "'because he could swear by no one greater, "'he swore by himself, saying, "'Surely, blessing, I will bless you, "'and multiplying, I will multiply you.' "'And so after he had patiently endured, "'he obtained the promise.'"

For men indeed swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is for them an end of all dispute. Thus God, determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us."

Here the author of Hebrews goes on to give us another example. He says, imitate those who by faith and patience have inherited the promises. Here's exhibit A, Abraham. God gave to Abraham a promise that he would be the father of many, that his descendants would be as numbered like the stars in the sky or the sand of the sea. Promise to Abraham. But here the author of Hebrews walks us through, God doesn't just give the promise to Abraham, he adds on an oath to

to the promise. And I think many times we would think of a promise and combine it with an oath, like it's an automatic thing. Like I promise, and we're thinking of that as an oath. But the word promise literally means a public declaration. And so God has made a public declaration to Abraham, I'm going to make you a father of many. But he doesn't just leave it there. He adds on an oath to

to that promise. Verse 13 says, when God made the promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no one greater, he swore by himself. And so he added on this oath to go along with it. Now, I grew up in the church, and as a child in church world, you learn these kinds of things. And so you learn about promises, right?

And of course, we know where to keep our promises, and it's important, and God takes them seriously. And as kids, when you're challenging one another in things, and you're not really sure if that kid's telling you the truth about what happened or what they're going to do, they're telling you a story, and you say, do you promise that's what happened? And the kid's like, oh, yeah, I promise. But if you really still don't trust the kid, you go,

do you promise to Jesus? And we have, as kids, it was like, oh, like now we're serious, right? Like that's, yeah, now I have to tell the truth no matter what, right? You swear by someone greater than yourself. And the Lord is using this thing that happens for us as humans where we have to take these oaths to affirm our word and we swear by things greater than ourselves so that we're held accountable to something higher than

But when it comes to the Lord, there's nothing higher. He is the ultimate power, the ultimate knowledge, the ultimate in glory. And so the author of Hebrews says he couldn't swear by anyone greater. So he swore by himself. He promised in his own name, attaching it to his own character. Now, already it is guaranteed when God promises it, even if there's no oath.

But now that God has added an oath, now it's a double guarantee. It's a double promise because God cannot lie. That's the case he's making in the next couple of verses. Verse 17, God determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel confirmed it by an oath that by two immutable things, two unchanging things, it's impossible for God to lie.

that we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us. Here, the author of Hebrews is explaining, God didn't need to make an oath for his sake. Sometimes we might do that. If I'm telling you I'm going to do something, and I want a little bit more accountability, because there's a little bit of a question in my mind if I'm actually going to do it, then I'll be like, okay, I promise I will be there.

And sometimes that's for the other person, but sometimes that's for ourselves, right? That we're just trying to like, okay, I need to like bind myself to something, make it really serious so that I make sure that I show up and I do what I said I was going to do. But God doesn't need to make oaths like that or promises like that. When he says it, he is faithful to his word 100%. He cannot lie. So the very first statement, Abraham, you're going to be a father of many nations, that's already guaranteed from the Lord, right?

But for Abraham's sake, again, verse 17, he was determined to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise. Abraham, I want you to believe this even to a greater degree. I want you to have confidence. And so I don't need to make an oath, but I'm going to go ahead and take an oath on top of that. And so now you have God saying,

who cannot lie, declare the statement, make the promise, and you have God who cannot lie, add on to it an oath. And it's double now that God will fulfill his word to Abraham. And you know what God did? He fulfilled his word to Abraham. Verse 15 says, and so after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. Abraham received the promise that God gave him after he patiently endured.

God's promises are not often fulfilled in a straight line. You start at the beginning of the coil. You have some ups. You have some downs. You have some twists. You have some turns. You may not feel like you're making forward progress. You may not feel like you're moving forward. You're confused. You don't know what's happening. But here God is moving you down the path toward the destination that he has promised to you. Abraham is first given this promise at 75 years old in Genesis chapter 12.

God calls him out from his family and says, go out to the place I'll show you, and I'm going to make you a father of many nations. Some time passes, about 11 years, no children yet. So Abraham and Sarah decide, hmm, maybe there's something we can do about this to help God out here, because this promise doesn't look like it's coming together. And so they come up with a plan, and they have a child through their maidservant. Ishmael is born.

And they think, great, we did it. We saved God out of his trouble. The promise he made wasn't going to come to pass, but we did it. Then a few years later, God shows up to Abraham and says, I'm going to give you a son, just like I promised. And Abraham says, wait a minute, I already had a son. Can you just fulfill the promise through that son? God says, no, that's not the son I promised you. That's the son you did on your own. The son I promised you, he's going to come. He's

Abraham is 99 years old, 24 years have passed, and God promises a son to Abraham and Sarah. And then a year later, Isaac is born, the promised son. Abraham is 100 years old. And so he leaves Haran at 75. He's gone 25 years now, and he has the first son of the promise. God said, you're going to be a father of many nations, great multitude, descendants as innumerable as the sand.

And he starts here with one, 25 years later. When Isaac is 60 years old, he has two sons, twins, Jacob and Esau. This time, Abraham is 160 years old. He's alive to see his grandkids, these two boys, be born. He sees them until they're about 15 years old, and then he enters into eternity. Altogether, he sees three, three promised descendants of the multitude that God promised.

He's traveled through the journey, traveled up and down all kinds of doubts and concerns and challenges and difficulties. But you know what kids sing today in Sunday school all across the land? You guys know this song? Father Abraham had many sons, right? Why do we sing that song? Because the end of the journey happened. God fulfilled his promise to Abraham. The author of Hebrews addresses this again a little bit later in Hebrews 11, verse 12.

He says, therefore, from one man and him as good as dead were born as many as the stars of the sky and multitude innumerable as the sand, which is by the seashore. Here's Abraham, a hundred years old, as good as dead. But to him, God fulfilled this promise. He patiently endured and sets the example for us patiently hope because it counts double as

When God makes a promise, his word is unchangeable. He's promised. He's taken the oath. Now for you and I, we might look at this a little bit differently and go, well, what promises has God added on an oath to his promise? And there are some. In fact, Melchizedek, Jesus, our high priest, you can read about that in chapter seven. That is one that is given to us, not just a promise, but also with an oath. But I think there's another aspect of this that we can consider as well.

That is, that God has spoken to us his word, and he's captured it and recorded it for us as scripture. And so we have the word of God. You can take Romans chapter 8 and say, all things will work together for your good. Now, when God said that, it was true, and it's true.

going to be fulfilled. It's a promise you can hold on to, but God has also recorded it for us in the scriptures. And so we have a double promise in that way as well, because Jesus said, heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will by no means pass away. The scriptures are given to us as the authoritative word of God, and they will be fulfilled.

And whether or not it was recorded and kept for us in scripture, there's many other things that God spoke to people throughout all of history that are not recorded in here. And those things are true because God said it, right? In a similar way, God said it and then also stamped it permanently in scripture for us to have that double confirmation. It counts double. God has said it. He's recorded it in his word. And we can patiently endure with hope because God has promised and it counts double.

Well, moving on to verse 19 and 20, we'll get the third point this morning, and that is anchor your soul in God's presence through hope. Anchor your soul in the presence of God through hope. Let's read verse 19 and 20. It says,

where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus, having become high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. Here the author of Hebrews gives us another good illustration to help us understand these things. The illustration of an anchor. This hope we have, the hope of the fulfilled promises that God has given, this hope we have as the anchor of the soul. And I would wonder this morning how many of you

You don't have to raise your hand or anything, but just think about in your mind and confirm in your heart, how many of you know what it's like not to have an anchor for the soul? Where you're lost, you're untethered, there's no security, there's no stability, there's tossing and turning, there's waves and storms and challenges, and there's no anchor to hold you fast. Here the author of Hebrews says, look, we can have an anchor for our souls.

It is the worst feeling in the world to be unsettled in our soul. But you could have an anchor of the soul. And that anchor is hope. Hope in the promises that God has provided. And this is an experience that we are all familiar with and that we all will reacquaint ourselves with as things transpire in our lives. Just to share a little bit of my story. For the past two years,

I've walked through a challenging season. These past two years have been the hardest, most painful years that I've ever experienced. And it started in great crisis. It started in intense pain and it continues today. Every day, I still experience pain.

I still experience difficulty and challenge. And there's things as I walk through this season that the Lord has to continue to bring me back to. And I have to hold on to the anchor of my soul. As this crisis season began, for the first few months, I would say four, five, six months, Kim and I would sit together on the couch every day and we would cry together. We would read, we would pray.

We would ask God to help us. Like all we could ask for was just enough to get us through the next day until the next time we could sit down on the couch together and cry and read and pray and ask God for the next day. Prior to this season, we had a lot of security. I mean, of course, there was challenges in life and things that we were going through, but we had the rest of our lives planned out, 40 years of plans ahead of us. Prior to that, we had a ton of support, so many people around us.

But as we entered into this crisis season, all of that was removed. There was no certainty, no future, not the people we expected to be around us in the midst of the hardest times we've ever experienced. And honestly, we didn't know for sure that we would survive the crisis. We didn't know if our marriage would survive the crisis. We didn't know how we were going to get through it. But every day, every single day, as we sat before the Lord, he would find a way to tell us, I am with you.

And in the greatest storm of our lives, where we needed the anchor the most, the Lord gave us a tether. And, you know, sometimes when you're in the midst of pain, there's so much that the Lord could say and so much we want to know, but all you can do is just hold on to one thing. And there was this word from the Lord continually, I am with you. And so we would know, we would be reminded every day, and we needed that reminder every day, and we still need that reminder every day.

No matter what I'm going through mentally, emotionally, no matter what I'm experiencing, the Lord is saying, I am with you. And the Lord gave me another tether as I walked through that season. Out of Isaiah chapter 46, verse 4. And

Interesting circumstances, the way the Lord brought it to me. I won't dive into that. But the Lord brought this verse to me and just made it so powerful. It's a daily reminder now. Don't be surprised if you see me one day and I have it tattooed on my body because it is something that anchors my soul. Where the Lord says, I have made you. I will carry you. I will sustain you. I will rescue you.

And these things, all four of them just speak so deep into my heart to help tether me to the anchor, the hope that God has provided. And the hope here, he says, the anchor to your soul is inside the veil. And this is really significant and really important because this hope enters the presence behind the veil is what God says. And he's saying here, look, picture the tabernacle or the temple.

And there was two parts to it. There was two rooms of the temple. The first room was the holy place, and there the priests would go in and out all day long, ministering to the Lord and taking care of the things that were in need. But then beyond that was this room where the Ark of the Covenant was, and the presence of God would dwell, and the priests were not allowed in there.

And it was separated one room from the other by this veil that separated the holy place from the most holy place. But then, of course, we know when Jesus died upon the cross, that very hour as he's on the cross at his death, the Lord does something supernatural and he grabs the temple veil and he rips it in two from top to bottom.

And the author of Hebrews brings this up and says it signifies for us that the way and the entrance into the presence of God has been opened through Jesus. Now, when he talks about hope,

that enters beyond the presence of the veil. It's behind the veil in the presence of God. Listen, when you hope and trust God for his promises, when you grasp hold of those tethers that he has given to you and say, I can't understand. I'm on this spiral. I'm going through circles. I'm upside down and right side up and turned and turned. And all these things are happening. And I'm just, I just, Lord, I'm holding on to your truth, your promises. You know where you are?

You are in the presence of God. You're in the presence of God when you hold on to, when you grasp hold of. And yeah, you're struggling and things are not clear and things are hard and challenging and maybe you're in tears, but you're in the presence of God. And the promise of God is being fulfilled in you where he said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. And the Lord will show up for you in the presence behind the veil as you hold on to God.

the anchor for your soul, the hope that he has provided for you. God's promises are not often fulfilled in a straight line, but God gives you strong exhortation, great reason to hope in his promises. And so I would encourage you this morning, be diligent. Don't slack off in your relationship with God. It's tempting and it can be challenging. And oftentimes there's pressing things that push out our time of drawing near to God.

that push out the things of our mind where we would come back to the hope and the promises that God has given. But bring yourself back. Seize the hope that God has set before you. Hope in God's promises until the end. Patiently hope because it counts double. God's word will be fulfilled. It is for sure. So anchor your soul in the presence of God by hoping.

By setting your eyes, setting your expectation, setting your heart on the things that God has promised that he will do. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 1, all the promises of God in him that is in Jesus are yes. And in him, amen to the glory of God through us. There's so much that God has for you. There's so much that God has promised and that God wants to do. And it's all through faith in Jesus Christ.

And as a believer in Jesus Christ, you can lay hold of these promises. They are yes and amen to the glory of God. Amen. Lord, we thank you for the great confidence and encouragement that you give to us. Help us, Lord, to take you at your word, to be strongly encouraged to hope in you and the great promises that you've given to us. And God, I pray for anyone.

who might be going through some really challenging cycles, and there is the ups and downs and the twists and the turns and upside downs and feels like we're going backwards. Lord, would you help us to lay hold of your word, to hear from you your promises to us? And Lord, would you teach us to hope, to have great confidence, that confident expectation? Lord, we understand it's not always going to be a simple step and one smooth thing and that's all done, but

In the midst of the twists and the turns, Lord, we can trust you and you promise to be with us. And so, Lord, reveal yourself to us, I pray. As we worship you right now, God, I pray that you administer to our hearts. Reveal yourself afresh and anew to us, Lord, that we might hear your voice and be reminded. Lord, you shouldn't have to remind us. You've said it once and that's enough. But, Lord, because you're so gracious and merciful to us,

You add oath to promises. You add reminders and confirmations. And Lord, we invite you to do that again. Would you speak to our hearts that we would be built up, solidified in our trust and hope in you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. We pray you have been blessed by this Bible teaching. The power of God to change a life is found in the daily reading of his word. Visit ferventword.com to find more teachings and Bible study resources.