“Promise - God’s Power to Guarantee Your Future.”
Hebrews 6:13-19
April 22, 2001
Dr. Jerry Nelson
Promises are powerful!
The right promise, by the
right person, can guarantee the future and even change the present.
When I was about 10 years of age I was left
home alone while my parents and siblings visited my grandparents about six
miles away in the town closest to our farm home.
Like the huge wind and thunderstorms that
strike eastern Colorado on occasion, so that night a storm hit our area of
Wisconsin.
It was one of those storms
when the lightening and thunder nearly coincide - you see the flash and a
bone-jarring clap strikes immediately.
You are certain the
lightening has struck the house even as the house shakes.
I had seen such storms before and just that
summer a tornado had smashed two of the smaller buildings near our house and
strewn the boards and contents over our yard and nearby fields.
That night as the storm raged, I was in a
second-floor bedroom.
I was in bed and I had the
covers pulled over my head as I alternated between singing and crying.
I would sing loudly
attempting to drown out the sound of the storm.
But every so often the
sound would penetrate and I would cry in fear.
Then I would get hold of
myself and begin again to sing or whistle loudly, pretending all was well.
I tell you that story as a parable of life.
There are times in our
lives when the future seems very uncertain.
Two weeks ago I noted there are two
anxieties that are common to all people - anxiety over the past and anxiety
about the future.
I spoke to the first of those - our anxiety
about the past - then.
Many of us would do almost
anything to be able to change some of our past.
But only one thing can
alter our history and that is forgiveness.
God by his grace changes
our past when he forgives and forgets - when he treats us as if it never
happened.
We likewise alter someone
else’s past when we do the same for them.
Forgiveness is the power
to change the past.
Today I want us to think about the other
anxiety that is common to all people - anxiety about the future.
Uncertainty sometimes niggles away in the
backs of everyone’s mind.
Young people are often consumed with anxiety
about the future -
when their parents
divorce, when moving to a new city or school, when they approach graduation
from high school or college.
Some older people are overcome with it as
health deteriorates, as family members die, as expenses increase but income
doesn’t.
And the rest of us try hard to avoid anxiety
and work hard to insure against it.
But anxiety is pervasive and too often
severe.
Dr. Arman Nicholi Jr (professor of
psychiatry at Harvard Medical School) notes the great increase in depression in
America.
There are currently eleven
million people diagnosed as clinically depressed and over 250,000 people each
year attempt to take their lives.
He asks, “How do we explain the explosive
increase in depression and hopelessness within our society as we enter the
twenty-first century A.D.?
He went on to write, “Historians and social
scientists tell us that we have fewer spiritual resources to draw from than at
any time in Western cultural history.
Many young people today feel that their cultures fail to provide answers
to questions of purpose and meaning and destiny. We fail, they feel, to provide some reason for hope. The consequence is that we are now in a
cultural crisis and living in what is being called “The Age of Despair.” We hear of our “spiritual vacuum” and our
“crisis of meaning”. (In Finding God at Harvard: Spiritual Journeys of
Thinking Christians, Zondervan 1996
p112-113)
All of us long for a sense of security in
our lives - some guarantee about the future.
We take out insurance to
insure.
We open mutual funds and
bank accounts to assure sufficient funds for the future, we seek a particular
education to insure our future, and we seek out specific relationships in an
attempt to guarantee against loneliness.
But in the back of our mind and sometimes in
the forefront we realize that all our guarantees could evaporate in a minute.
We witness an auto
accident, a Columbine, a friend with cancer, we see others being laid off or a
business that fails and we wonder how secure the future really is.
Walt Whitman captures something of our
longing for security.
“A noiseless patient spider
I mark’d where on a little promontory it
stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast
surround,
It launch’d forth filament, filament,
filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly
speeding them.
And you, O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans
of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing throwing,
Seeking
the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d,
till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch
somewhere, O my soul.
We are forever attempting to anchor our
lives, to attach ourselves to something that is more secure, to bring some
certainty into an uncertain future.
Is there anything that can
do that?
Is there anything that can
guarantee the future?
The answer is yes and they
are called promises.
Promises are powerful!
The right promise, by the
right person, can guarantee the future and even change the present.
That night, as the wind howled around the
house of this, then 10 year-old boy, I heard the phone ring.
I don’t remember if it
rang during a fit of crying or a fantasy of singing but I heard it and, as
frightened as I was to venture from the bed, I answered it.
The first six words I heard changed my
night.
They were a promise and
they guaranteed my future.
It was my father on the
phone and he said, “Jerry, I’m coming to get you.”
The wind still blew, the thunder cracked,
and it seemed like an eternity but the outcome in my mind was never in doubt -
my father had promised he was coming.
That promise guaranteed my
future and altered my present.
Promises are powerful.
Only one thing affirms that humanity will
not just simply expire.
Only one thing assures us
that the entire universe will not just simply fly apart.
Only one thing guarantees
that you and I will not soon just simply cease to exist.
That one thing is a
promise!
Only one thing assures that human history is
moving to a predictable end.
Only one thing guarantees
that you and I will live forever.
A promise!
God’s promise!!
Listen to Hebrews 6:13-19
“When God made his promise
to Abraham, since there was no one greater for him to swear by, he swore by
himself, saying, "I will
surely bless you and give you many descendants." And so after waiting
patiently, Abraham received what was promised.
Men swear by someone
greater than themselves, and the oath confirms what is said and puts an end to
all argument. Because God wanted to
make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of
what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath. God did this so that, by two unchangeable
things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged.
We have this hope as an
anchor for the soul, firm and secure.
It
enters the inner sanctuary behind the
curtain, where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf.”
There are two key words here: God’s Promise!
Forgiveness is God’s power to change the
past.
Promise is God’s power to
guarantee the future.
Let me show you that from this text in
Hebrews 6.
The author is clearly using the example of
God’s promise to Abraham from Genesis 22 to illustrate the quality of God’s
promises to us.
In that account, Abraham
is commanded by God to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice.
When Abraham was willing
to obey this nigh impossible, this seemingly contradictory, command of God we
are told that God made a promise to Abraham.
In the words of the author
of Hebrews that promise was: "I will surely bless you and give you many
descendants."
But the author wants us to see something
unusual about the way God makes this promise to Abraham:
“When God made his promise
to Abraham, since there was no one greater for him to swear by, he swore by
himself…”
In verse 16 we are told the significance of
this:
When men or women want
someone to believe them, they claim some more permanent person or object as a
witness to their promise:
We will "swear on a
stack of Bibles" that we will do such and such.
Or we will say, "so
help me God".
In either case we are
appealing to something or someone with more credibility than we have, to back
us up.
Well according to V17 when God wanted to
express his promise to Abraham AND TO US in such a way as to give us absolute
confidence that it would happen - since there was no one or nothing greater
than himself on whom or which he could call, God took an oath on himself.
God in essence said,
"I God, so help me God" will do as I promised.
So in two ways God guarantees that what he
says will happen:
One, he God, promises it
AND
Two, he God, swears to
it.
These two unchangeable things show how
impossible it is for God to lie.
Or as Moses wrote it in
Numbers 23:19
“God is not a man, that he
should lie,
nor a son of man, that he should change his mind.
Does he speak and then not act?
Does he promise and not fulfill?”
Back to Abraham’s experience, the author of
Hebrews writes what every one of his readers would have known:
“after waiting patiently,
Abraham received what was promised.”
God promised and it
absolutely happened!
With that illustration cited the author then
makes his point:
“God wanted to make the unchanging nature of
his purpose very clear… so that… we…
may be greatly encouraged.”
God’s purpose in promising and swearing to
it was not for Abraham alone but also
for us.
He wanted to make clear
the unchanging nature of his
purpose so that we would not be overcome with anxiety about the future.
Our future is guaranteed
by nothing less than God’s promise and he has sworn himself to fulfilling it.
And what has he promised as it relates to
your future?
Listen to his own words carefully:
What about your life?
Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have
for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm
you, plans to give you hope and a future.
Thinking he would only be
with us a few weeks, Barbara and I made the decision early in our son’s life
that we would rock him or lie with him until he drifted off to sleep each
night.
It’s a great time as we
talk, pray and sing together.
Many nights after he falls
asleep, I stroke his head and just stare intently at him and think it is
impossible to love someone more than we love him.
And often it occurs to me
in that moment to acknowledge to God, “This is how you feel about me isn’t it?”
And that is how he feels
about you!
What about God’s own presence in your life
now?
Hebrews 13:5 God has said,
"Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you."
That is God’s promise to
Carol Kimbriel as she faces death.
What about the seemingly impossible
situations you face?
I Corinthians 10:13 “No testing has gripped
you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be
tested beyond what you can bear. But when you are tested, he will also provide
a way out so that you can stand up under it.
That’s God’s promise to
Sharon and John Boyer as Sharon continues to battle cancer.
What about death itself?
John 11:25 “I am the resurrection and the
life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies.”
That’s God’s promise to
every widow and widower in this church.
What about a future after death?
John 14:3 “I will come back and take you to
be with me that you also may be where I am.”
Do you realize what we have in these
promises?
No, the promises don’t directly address
every detail of life.
We’d like to know which
college, which job, will we have always have sufficient income, will our health
hold, will our relationships thrive.
But God gives us promises that are far more
foundational, significant and eternal.
He promises his loving
presence and his powerful superintendence in all of life and beyond life to
eternity itself.
By his promise God has already guaranteed
our future.
It is impossible for God
to lie.
We can lay hold of his promises.
They are ours to claim.
We can come into face of
God and say, “You promised!”
When I’m with my son and I suggest we not do
what I had said we would do, he says, “But Papa, you said!”
And with those words he
grabs hold of my integrity - “You said!”
Yes, I did say. Can I go back on my word? Can I do less than I promised?
Would I not cease to be
something of what “Papa”, “father” means?
God would cease to be God if he failed in
his promises.
And if we cease to believe
his promises we cease to believe in God.
Rather, the author says, “we have this hope
as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.”
This hope we have is the certain promise of
God.
Playwright Jean Kerr wrote, “Hope is the
feeling you have that the feeling you have isn’t permanent.” (Finishing
Touches, act III)
But in the Scripture hope is not that
hopefulness (that “I hope so” of so many) but hope is the absolute certainty of
what will come - what God has guaranteed will happen.
These promises of God are an anchor for the
soul.
That’s a brilliant phrase!
An anchor bites into the solid-ness of the
ocean floor and holds a boat securely in place.
The promises of God tie us
directly to the person of God.
Our lives are secured by
the certainty of God’s promises.
We are moored to an
immovable object.
In keeping with the maritime motif I want to
show you a familiar picture. It’s the
picture of a lighthouse in a violent storm.
The other elders of our
church gave this to me in a particularly difficult time in my family’s
life.
The most obvious and
powerful point is the immovable rock to which the lighthouse is anchored.
The promise of God anchors us to the rock.
“Let the winds blow, and billows roll,
Hope is the anchor of my soul.
But can I by so slight a tie,
An unseen hope, on God rely?
Steadfast and sure, it cannot fail,
It enters deep within the veil,
It fastens on a land unknown,
And moors me to my father’s throne.”
God has promised and he has sworn to it.
All that makes God “God” stands behind his
promise.
He will not, he cannot fail you.
Promise is God’s power to guarantee the
future