Now, in the book of Hebrews, the 6th
chapter, in the book of Hebrews, the 6th
chapter, verse 13 to the end.
For when God made promise to Abraham, because
he could swear by no greater, he swore
by himself, saying, Surely, blessing I will bless
thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee.
So after he had patiently endured, he obtained
the promise.
For men verily swear by the greater, and
an oath for confirmation is to them an
end of all strife.
Wherein God, willing more abundantly to show unto
the heirs of promise the immutability of his
counsel, confirmed it by an oath, that by
two immutable things in which it was impossible
for God to lie, we might have a
strong consolation who have fled for refuge to
lay hold upon the hope set before us.
Which hope we have is an anchor of
the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which
enters into that within the veil where the
forerunner is for us entered.
Even Jesus made a High Priest forever after
the order of Melchizedek.
Now I have good news here for you
from God that is so good and healing
to the soul that it is better than
any news from a far country, better than
any news you could hear or read of
anything happening in the world today.
It is here by the Holy Spirit and
it is for us.
The purpose of the Spirit here is to
confirm the Hebrew Christians and us in the
faith.
The Holy Spirit is saying to us, this
faith of Christ is worthy of your complete
confidence.
It is worthy of your loyalty and your
ultimate committal.
He is saying to us that this faith
of Jesus Christ rests upon the character of
God.
And this I should like to emphasize this
morning, that our Christian hope rests upon the
character of the Prime God.
We are saved through the New Covenant.
If Christians could only keep that in mind,
we are covenant persons.
And we are certainly covenanters, as they were
in Scotland years ago who took that name.
We are covenanters, too.
We are saved through the New Covenant.
God has made a pledge of his own
free will, and a Christian is a Christian
and remains a Christian because of a bond
between the persons of the Godhead and the
believing man.
And God gives an assurance of never-ending
goodwill.
Now, because what the Holy Spirit writes is
better than anything that I can say, I
want to read from the scriptures the covenant
God makes with people.
This is from the 89th Psalm, and it
refers to David, but certainly you won't have
listened or read more than a couple of
verses until you see that it goes away
beyond David.
He is talking about another David's greater son,
David's son and heir, Jesus Christ the Lord.
It is written, verse 19, Then thou speakest
in vision to thine holy one, and saidest,
I have laid help upon one that is
mighty.
I have exalted one chosen out of the
people.
I have found David my servant, with my
holy oil have I anointed him, with whom
my hand shall be established, my arm also
shall strengthen him, the enemy shall not exact
upon him, nor the son of wickedness afflict
him.
You will notice these are statements made by
God about David and David's seed and David's
people, and they are almost unconditional.
God never makes any unconditional promises, but they
are as near unconditional as they ever get.
And I will beat down his foes before
his face, and plague them that hate him.
And my faithfulness and my mercy shall be
with him, and in my name shall his
horn be exalted.
And I will set his hand also in
the sea, and his right hand in the
rivers.
And he shall cry unto me, Thou art
my Father, my God, and the rock of
my salvation.
And I will make him my firstborn, higher
than the kings of the earth, could be
none other than Jesus.
My mercy will I keep for him forevermore,
and my covenant shall stand fast with him.
That is, God's mercy through Jesus Christ, and
the covenant which he made, is, are, though
two of them, forevermore, and they stand fast.
His seed also will I make to endure
forever, and his throne is the days of
heaven.
If his children forsake my law and walk
not in my judgments, if they break my
statutes and keep not my commandments, then will
I visit their transgressions with the rod, and
their iniquity with stripes.
Nevertheless, my lovingkindness will I not utterly take
from him, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail.
My covenant will I not break, nor alter
the thing that is gone out of my
lips.
Once have I sworn by my holiness that
I will not lie unto David."
Now, that's what the Lord says in the
89th Psalm, and in the book of Isaiah
he says this, "...for a small moment have
I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will
I gather thee.
In a little wrath I hid my face
from thee for a moment, but with everlasting
kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith
the Lord thy Redeemer.
For this is as the waters of Noah
unto me.
For as I have sworn that the waters
of Noah should no more go over the
earth, so have I sworn that I would
not be wroth with thee nor guilty.
For the mountains shall depart and the hills
be removed, but my kindness shall not depart
from thee, neither shall the covenant of my
peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath
mercy on thee."
Now, those are the promises made by God
which assure us of God's never-ending goodwill.
But I want you to see this, that
all of these promises are of value only
as we can establish the fact that the
one who made them is worthy.
A covenant is only as good as the
character of the one who makes it.
A promise is nothing in itself.
I've said that a number of times here,
that a promise is nothing in itself.
Its value depends upon the character of the
one who made it.
If you make a promise you can't keep,
the promise is of no avail and of
no value.
But if you make a promise with the
intention of keeping it, and you can keep
it, then it is a good promise because
it rests upon a good character.
So all the promises of God rest upon
the character of God.
That's why I keep teaching and insisting that
we ought to know what kind of God
God is.
We ought to search the scriptures and learn
what kind of God we're dealing with so
that faith will spring up normally and naturally.
And we will know when we are listening
to a promise uttered by God that that
promise is absolutely trustworthy because the God who
made it is trustworthy.
Now there are reasons why covenants are sometimes
made and later broken, or why they fail.
Let me give you some of the reasons.
Sometimes a covenant is made and the person
who makes it has no intention of keeping
it, so it fails because of the duplicity
of the promiser.
I think that we would be very foolish,
for instance, in the Western world if we
entered into any kind of bargain with the
Communists.
They do not intend to keep their promises
only so long as it works for their
favor, in their favor, but the moment that
it works against them and works for the
good of the other side, they will break
it.
They've done that, I wouldn't know how many
times.
I think if an effort were made, it
could be found that something between 75 and
100 covenant promises have been broken by the
Russians since the World War.
Now that means that a covenant is made
and broken through the duplicity of the maker.
He doesn't intend to keep it, so he
makes it in order to gain something and
breaks it as soon as he's gained it.
But when it comes to God, I hardly
need say that nothing like this could happen
there.
And then another reason covenants sometimes fail is
that the one who makes the covenant finds
it impossible to fulfill it.
The man makes a promise, but he finds
he can't fulfill it.
Things go bad for him, or physically or
intellectually or financially, he's just unable to fulfill
his promise.
So he fails through ignorance.
He didn't know.
He didn't know himself.
He didn't know his situation.
He overestimated his ability, and therefore the promise
fails.
Or again, a covenant fails because the one
who makes it changes his mind and cancels
it afterward.
And so the covenant fails through the instability
of the promisor.
And then other times circumstances shift a little
bit, and so people are unable to fulfill
a promise that's made, and it fails through
the weakness of the promisor.
Or a man makes a promise and then
dies, and so it fails through the mortality
of the promisor.
Now those are the five reasons why promises
are made and broken.
Why covenants between men and men, nations and
nations, are sometimes wrenched violently apart.
But God's covenant cannot fail, and we have
the reason given for it, you see, in
the passage which I read to you.
Among men an oath is an appeal to
something greater.
It is when a man wants to stand
before a court and declare that he will
tell the truth and the whole truth and
nothing but the truth, he adds, so help
me God.
That's considered to be an oath.
And after that he's a perjurer if he
tells a lie, because he has called upon
somebody greater than himself to witness that he's
telling the truth.
And that's an oath among men.
And men know their failures, and so they
bind each other.
They know their tendency to lie.
They've maybe not read what David said, that
all men are liars, but they've had enough
experience to know David was right, that generally
speaking, until you become a Christian and stop
lying and put away evil, that lying is
quite a convenient scheme for getting along in
the world.
Men know it, and so they're not willing
to have a man stand up and say,
it's this way.
They say, now first put your hand up
and place your other hand on the Bible
and promise before all this court and before
this judge, promise that you will tell the
truth.
Then call on God to witness that you're
not going to lie.
That's rather humorous.
I think they must chuckle in hell whenever
a man gets up before a court and
says, I promise before God I won't tell
a lie.
Well, why were you willing to tell it
in the first place?
That's the question I'd like to ask.
Why is it?
I'm always bothered when I hear a man
that always has to appeal to somebody higher
than himself for confirmation.
But when God wanted to humble himself and
go along with our way of doing things,
so he made a promise.
And he made a promise to save his
people.
And when he made a promise, he started
with Abraham.
And he couldn't call on anybody greater to
confirm his statement.
So he swore, and he could only swear
by himself.
For men verily swear by the greater, and
an oath for confirmation is to them an
end of all strife.
Wherein God, willing more abundantly to show unto
the heirs of promise the immutability of his
counsel, confirmed it by an oath, that but
two immutable things in which it was impossible
for God to lie, we might have a
strong consolation who have fled for refuge to
lay hold upon the hope set before us.
So God made an oath.
He swore an oath.
But it was not an oath.
He did not appeal to an archangel.
He appealed to somebody greater, and he looked
about for a greater, and of course found
none.
So he swore by himself, saying, By myself
will I swear.
So he did it for the heirs of
the promise.
We say to God, O God, what assurance
do you give?
What assurance do you give that Christ's death
for us avails?
What assurance do you give that the blood
of Jesus secures our salvation?
What assurance do you give that our place
in thy love is unchanging?
What assurance, O God, do you give that
our faith in thy promises is secure?
And God says, Well, I have nobody greater
that I can call on.
I cannot raise my hand and call on
some God greater than myself, because none greater
exists.
So I swear by myself that I will
do these things, and that is an oath
of confirmation.
Now, it's just a question of who made
that oath, who swore that oath.
There are many a man who swears an
oath and then sits there and lies, because
he hasn't got any character to start with.
He not only will lie out of season,
but he will swear and then lie in
season, because he has no character.
But because God is who he is, therefore
we can trust God absolutely.
I'd like to have you people know this,
that your hope for salvation, for forgiveness, for
peace in death, and for hope for the
life to come and heaven at last, does
not rest on how you feel this morning.
If it rested on how I felt this
morning, I might as well pack up and
start for the nether regions, because definitely I
don't feel heavenly.
Changing weather and hard work and so on.
But anyhow, your covenant, your hope, doesn't depend
on how you feel.
It depends on something else.
It depends upon whether God's all right or
not.
It depends upon when God makes a promise,
you can trust God to keep it.
It depends upon whether God is the one
able to make good on his promises and
keep his covenants.
Now, let's look at it a little bit.
Take that word, holy.
Holiness, that's one of the attributes of God.
And because God is holy, God cannot lie.
It says over here, God that cannot lie,
God willing to show the immutability of his
covenant, in which it was impossible for God
to lie.
God can't lie.
He can't lie.
There are some things I've told you that
God can't do, even though that God is
omnipotent.
There are some things he can't do.
God can't lie, because God is holy.
And to be holy, if he lied, he
would have to violate his holiness.
And God can't violate his holiness, and therefore
God cannot lie.
You say, since God cannot lie, does that
mean that God is not omnipotent?
The answer is that omnipotent is not the
ability to do anything, it's the ability to
do anything he wills to do.
And he doesn't will to lie.
And he doesn't will to cheat nor deceive.
He doesn't will to play false with his
people.
God wills to be true to his children.
So, they're holy.
God is holy, and because he's holy, they're
safe.
And then God's perfect in wisdom.
Now, I could understand how God might conceive
a scheme to redeem men, and he might
get some of those men to agree with
him and come his way and fall in
with him and believe on his son.
And then suddenly it would be found that
God could not make good, because he had
misjudged something.
I get a smile out of the fact
that John Diefenbaker and Ike Eisenhower sat down
down in Washington and put their two signatures
to a treaty.
And now it is not at all certain
that Ottawa will confirm the treaty.
And if that's the case, John and Ike
will look at each other red-faced and
say, well, we were honest men, but there's
something turned up we didn't know about.
You see, that's that inability to forecast the
future.
Both men were honest men, and in the
best of good faith they signed that treaty.
Now, if it isn't confirmed by Congress, if
it isn't confirmed by Parliament, it's dead.
But is that going to mean those two
men anything wrong with them?
No.
It simply means that they were men, and
being men, they weren't as wise as God,
and they couldn't predict the future.
And so their lack of wisdom would cause
the covenant that they made to fail.
Well, there's no such thing with God.
God knows everything that can be known, and
when God makes a promise, God's able to
make good on his promise because of who
he is.
He's perfect in wisdom, and he knows all
the details.
You see, you come out of your house,
and your driver gets into the car and
turns the little button, and it goes, and
doesn't start.
Then you take a cab to church.
Well, you see, the intentions were good, but
we didn't know the battery was down, or
it was cold, or had moisture in it,
or it had post-nasal drip or something
that was preventing the thing from starting.
We didn't know that.
Now, that's good intentions, but it's lack of
perfection in wisdom.
So you change your mind because the thing
you expected to work didn't work.
Now, again, omnipotence.
If God were not omnipotent, God could not
keep his covenant with me.
If God were not omnipotent, I couldn't be
sure that I would be saved.
I'm sure that I would be saved up
to a point, but when God reached a
point where somebody was stronger than he, then
I'd be lost.
But knowing that the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth,
and knowing that omnipotence means God can do
everything he wills to do, then I haven't
any doubt at all, for I am in
the arms of the Omnipotent God.
Well, then again, suppose that God were in
the habit of changing his mind.
I have met men, and I'm sure you
have met people.
They're always starting something new and then changing
their mind about it.
You see them one day in Chicago or
St. Louis or Ottawa, and they're all red
-faced and fleshed and excited, they can hardly
eat for talking, telling you about the new
proposition.
And you shake your hand, wish them well,
and see them two years later, and they
say, Oh, that, that didn't go through.
I wrote one time, I told you, from
one city to another with a young man
and his girlfriend.
I was riding to catch a train after
dedicating Bob Letourneau's conference grounds, and they were
just going along for the ride.
I was the one who didn't belong in
the back seat, but I had to be
back there with them, and it was pretty
terrible, pretty wonderful back there.
I sat there and sort of looked around
at the scenery passing by, and they sat
there and didn't see the scenery.
Well, about maybe five years later, I saw
this young man, and he brought a girl
up to me and said, Would you like
to have you meet my wife?
Big-mouthed me, I said, Oh, do I
remember that?
I said, I remember when we rode from
Takoa to Atlanta, 90 miles in an August
heat, and you two sitting in the back
seat.
Oh, boy, I said, I remember that.
He smiled and said, This isn't the girl.
And I asked him how they were getting
on on the foreign field, because they were
missionaries.
But something had happened, you see.
Somebody changed his mind, or her mind, I
don't know which, or maybe both had just
changed their mind.
They were mutable, you see.
That's subject to change.
But God, the immutable God, when he promised
that his people would be kept and that
we should be blessed forever and that his
mercies would be upon us forever and that
we could not perish, but he would keep
us, God, the immutable God, doesn't change his
mind about these things.
Well, then there's one more thing I have
mentioned.
It is that covenants sometimes fail through the
mortality of the promiser.
A man makes a promise with all intentions
of keeping it, and then grabs at his
chest and tumbles over, and they take him
off to the hospital, and in a few
days he's gone.
He meant all right.
He was wise enough to do it, and
he was kind enough to want to do
it, but he didn't live to do it.
But when we talk about the covenant that
keeps you and me, it is made and
kept in being by the eternal God.
So God cannot fail by cessation or discontinuance.
God, the eternal God, lives on, and because
he lives on, we live on, and we'll
live on as long as he lives on.
Isn't this an awful thought, my brethren, that
we're going to live as long as God?
Isn't that an awful and a wonderful and
an awesome thought, that we're going to live
as long as God lives?
We didn't begin when God began, because God
never began, and we began.
But as long as God, the eternal God,
exists and continues to be, as long as
God can say, I am and continue to
be what I am, you and I will,
in the grace of God, continue to be
what we are, because we are saved by
a covenant, you see.
And that covenant is sworn to by an
oath.
God Almighty confirmed his oath by two immutable
things.
We might have a strong consolation, who have
fled for refuge to lay hold upon the
hope set before us.
Now, those of you who are familiar with
the Old Testament know what that passage, fled
for refuge, means.
You remember they had six cities in Israel
in olden days, and those cities were the
cities of refuge.
And when a man accidentally killed another man,
suppose it says that they're working together with
axes, and the head flies off of an
axe and strikes another man on the head
and kills him.
Now, there was a law in Israel that
said the avenger of blood, that would be
the nearest of kin, the next brother or
the father or the next relative of the
dead man, could take vengeance on this fellow.
I'm working away and suddenly as I strike,
the head flies off of my axe and
kills a man.
Well, his nearest male relative had a right
under Jewish law to take out after me,
and when he found me, kill me for
having killed his brother.
But of course, it wouldn't have been a
just thing to do, so they had a
city of refuge.
And the fellow that had the accident looked
at his road map real quick and said,
What's the shortest way to the nearest city?
And off he took.
As fast as his legs would carry him,
racing to the city of refuge.
And sometimes he barely made it in with
his tongue hanging out, panting like a tired
dog.
And the fellow just behind him, just within
reach of the back of his neck, but
he didn't quite make it, he raced in.
And then the court trial took place, and
they decided whether the man was to blame
or not.
If he was not to blame, and of
course the fellow couldn't take vengeance, because to
do so would be to violate the law
again, and he would be the murderer.
That was the city of refuge.
They had six of them throughout Israel.
And the man of God that wrote this
by the Holy Ghost's inspiration, being a Jew,
knew all about that.
So he said, You have fled for refuge
to lay a hold upon the hopes that
are before you.
Here we Christians are.
And whether a man was guilty or not,
he had a right to fly to that
city of refuge.
If he wasn't guilty, it was proved not
so.
If he was guilty, he still had a
right to go to the city of refuge,
and if he made it to the city
of refuge before they got to him, he
was safe.
And the man of God says, You have
fled for refuge, and I can just see
myself with the devil one hot jump behind
me, racing for the cross of Jesus, racing
for Calvary's holy mountain.
And I find that at last, and just
as I race in, the door is let
down and the devil runs head on into
the door and bounces off, but he doesn't
get me, because I have found the refuge
and I am safe.
Which hope, he says, we have as an
anchor of the soul.
It's strange how they change figures of speech.
Brother Gray, when you studied in theological schools,
they told you not to change figures of
speech like that, didn't they?
But I'm so glad the writer to the
Hebrews didn't go to Bible school.
He would have been so badly off if
he had.
So he changed his figure of speech, and
he says, Which hope we have as an
anchor of the soul.
Now he's got him running to the city
of refuge, and suddenly he becomes an anchor
of the soul without taking his breath.
Now we have a ship, and we have
a storm, and we have the saints of
God on board the ship.
And somebody says, Well, what I see coming
up out here, that typhoon, I think we're
all dead.
I think we're all sunk, because we'll be
blown on the rocks.
Somebody says, Look down there, look down.
You look down and try to see the
anchor, but it's too far down.
But your anchor grips the rock, and the
ship is all right, and it outrides the
storm.
The anchor is there, but you don't see
it.
So said the Holy Ghost, We have an
anchor that keeps the soul steadfast and sure
while the billows roll.
And that anchor we don't see, but he's
there.
And he's there, having entered in within the
veil.
But the forerunner is for us entered.
What does he mean by the forerunner entering
in for us?
Well, he means that where Jesus is now,
we're going to be.
That's what he means.
Where Jesus is now, we're going to be.
He's the forerunner, he went first for us.
And we're coming along after him, and where
he is there, we're going to be.
Who is this forerunner?
Why, it's even Jesus, who was made a
high priest forever.
And high priests kept dying in olden times,
but this high priest has life forevermore after
the order of Melchizedek.
So, says the Spirit, go on, keep on
believing.
You're not mistaken in fleeing to Christ.
Our hope is sure, and our consolation is
strong, and our forerunner has already entered.
And the anchor grips the rock, and everything
is all right in our Father's house.
So arouse you, pursue holiness, be not slothful,
but follow those who through faith and patience
inherit the promises.
Show diligence and full assurance of hope unto
the end.
Lots of preachers are what they call inspirational
preachers.
They get up and don't give you one
bit of truth, or any fact at all
to go on, but they just keep needling
you, just keep putting the harpoon in you
all the time.
They don't give you any reason for it,
but the Holy Spirit never made that mistake.
He never exhorts until he has informed.
He never gives the invitation until he has
taught the truth.
So it is here.
He first lays before us one glorious, everlasting
covenant, sealed by blood and sworn to by
God, and promised by the God who cannot
lie.
Then it says, Because this is true, therefore
show diligence, be not slothful, but follow them
who through faith and patience inherit the promise.
Everything is all right on God's side, and
because everything is all right on God's side,
everything will be all right on your side
if you'll only trust.
Have faith, believe, dare to believe, put yourself
in his hands, for he is where you
are going.
And because he is where he is, you
are going where you are going.
You are saved by an oath of Almighty
God.
God, because he could not appeal to a
higher court, appealed to himself and said, Surely
blessing I will bless, saving I will save,
and keeping I will keep.
We Christians ought to be the most delighted,
happy people in the world.
Strange how we aren't.
I know why we aren't, though.
The devil is out after us, the flesh
is out after us, and the world is
out after us.
In fighting these three enemies, sometimes we don't
have time to be happy.
We don't have time to remember that we're
as safe in the arms of Jesus as
if we'd been in heaven for a thousand
years, if we'll only believe and go on,
and not disgrace ourselves in the kingdom of
God by turning back to the beggarly elements
of the world.
But I don't think you will, for I
am persuaded better things of you, my brethren,
and things that accompany salvation, will with us
speak.