Hebrews: An Anchor for the Soul
Pastor Fletcher preaches from Hebrews 6:13-20, read for us in Spanish. Discussion points: Jesus is the anchor for our souls by going where we can’t go to give us the security that we can’t achieve, Jesus keeps us grounded to the truth instead of to worldly things, Jesus helps us persevere through the storms of life.
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Scripture reader: Good morning. Our scripture reading today is from Hebrews 6:13-20. I will be reading from the Spanish version and you can follow along in the English version. When I finish reading, I will say this is the word of the Lord, and we will finish by saying thanks be to God together.
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.
This is the word of the Lord.
Preacher: Good morning, my name is Fletcher. It's a joy to have you this morning. If I haven't gotten to meet you, I'd love to meet you after the service today, so stick around for a little bit. My grandfather is 89 years old. He's, he's still living, still doing pretty well, down in Mississippi. I lived with my grandfather for a few years growing up, and he was always someone that I looked up to and, and needed in my life. my grandfather was a university professor. He taught biology and human A&P.
At the local university, and he was most well known, not for that, but for the fact that he was a fisherman. my grandfather fished almost every day of his life up until about 5 years ago. he would go fishing, even when he had an 8:00 a.m. class, he would wake up at 4 something. And go load up the boat, drive 30 minutes to the lake, catch what we call in the South, a mess of fish. That just means enough if you're unfamiliar with the Southern colloquialism. So he would go catch enough fish, which was like 20 or more and then come back, and we ate fish all the time growing up. I did not think fish was special at all to eat. We ate fish like every other day. I was really sick of it. It's only been like recently that I've been like, yeah, fish sounds good. It took me a long time to get to that place.
I went fishing with my grandfather all the time. My grandfather even tells you how small town of this is, the Sunday newspaper would oftentimes run stuff about the social goings on, in the community, and one time they ran a front page picture of my grandfather that just said Crappie master on the top, which is really an unfortunate title since crappie looks a lot like crappy, crappy master. In fact, I think that might be how you Yankees say it, up here.
So, my, I would go fishing with my grandfather pretty often. My grandfather was crazy with this fishing stuff. We would get in the boat and we would, we would ride in the boat like 20 minutes, at least it felt like to me when I was 8 years old. And we would go so far you couldn't see where we started. And then my grandfather would slow the boat down and he would say, hey, put your hook in right there. You'll get a bite. I'm like, how do you know? We just like went to a random spot on the lake. And sure enough, if you put your hook in right there, you would oftentimes get a bite. And I asked him eventually, how'd you know there was going to be a fish there? And he's like, oh, I was on this lake 30 years ago, and I saw someone dump their Christmas tree in right there. And I know that the fish are gonna find that to be a home. So I just, that's my new fishing spot. I know where it is. So he just knew the lakes like the back of his hand.
When I was on the lakes with my grandfather, we rarely ever would need to use an anchor. He had this boat, it was like a fiberglass, kind of a common fishing type of boat. Probably, Chat GT tells me, Chat GPT tells me it probably weighed about 4000 pounds. So it was a big boat, but it wasn't like a huge boat. It was like a normal size boat. we would, we would get on the boat and, and we would just kind of trawl around and, and find our fish.
But I do remember one or two occasions where we had to throw the anchor into the water. And I just remember being really surprised. It didn't look like one of the hook anchors that you imagine. It was just like the size of a softball connected to a rope, and it couldn't have weighed more than 15 pounds. I, I just, I still have a hard time understanding how that would work, that you would take a 15 pound lead ball and throw it in the water with a rope, and when it hits the ground, it could keep the 4000 pound boat in place. It's just wild to to consider that.
And today's passage tells us that Jesus is the sure and steadfast anchor for your souls. Do you feel like you need an anchor for your soul? I know that I do. My soul feels wayward, I feel like I have a 4000 pound monster of emotion that's constantly trying to figure out what to do, and I oftentimes feel completely rudderless and like I could just be blown into the rocks at any moment. And I need that anchor for my soul to hold me steady through life's storms. Amen. I have 4 different ways that Jesus is the anchor for our souls. Four different ways that Jesus is the anchor for our souls.
The first way Jesus went where we cannot go to give us security we cannot achieve alone. Jesus went where we cannot go to give us security we cannot achieve alone. Think about what an anchor does. An anchor goes to the place that you cannot go. Sure, you might be able to touch the water, but the only reason you would throw the anchor in is to go through the water, hit the ground, and to transfer the stability of the ground and the rocks that it hits there to your location in the boat. An anchor goes somewhere that you cannot and transfers the security of that foreign place to where you are standing. Which is exactly what Jesus does. Look at this in verse 19. We're gonna kinda handle this passage almost in reverse order. We're gonna handle the very end of it, we're gonna loop back because what happens is the author in classic Hebrew style kinda starts with an illustration and then he gets to the principles. But for me today, I felt like it was easier to start with the principles and then move to the illustration.
So here's what he says in verse 19. We have a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain. This is what Jesus does for us. He goes to where we cannot go to give us the security that we cannot achieve on our own. Now when it says that Jesus went into the inner place behind the curtain, we covered this a few weeks ago, but just in case you weren't here, I'll give you a recap of what he's talking about. He's talking about This place in the temple known as the Holy of the Holies. And in the Holy of the holies was where we would call the footstool of God. It's where God's presence was most manifested on earth. And in fact, in that Holy of the Holies, a small room in the middle of the sanctuary. Well, they only entered it one time per year. And only one person was allowed in. It was only the high priest of the entire people of Israel, and he would have to go through a, a huge, sacrifice, go make a sacrifice for himself, go through a, a, a period of washing and cleansing so that he could go in. And legend tells us that they would tie a rope around his waist, so that if he died in there, no one would have to go in after him, because if the high priest can't make it, surely some lower priest can't go into the Holy of the Holies and pull him out.
And so on that one day, he would go in with two goats, and he would make a sacrifice. He would sacrifice one goat for the sins of the people, and then the other one he would bring out as a scapegoat and lay the sins of the people on the goat to send it out. And what we know that they did not know in these Old Testament times, is that actually all of this was a mere illustration for what God had in store in the person of Jesus. That the sacrifices and the and the Holy of the Holies was never meant to be something that went on forever. It was meant to be an illustration that there would be a greater sacrifice to come. One who could truly bear the consequences of sin, who could truly be a sacrifice for each and every one of us, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, when he hung on the cross, bore the sin of all the people, and was our atoning sacrifice. Our full atonement, all that we need on him was laid the sins of the people, and he bore the consequences of our sin.
And when he died, He committed his life into his father's hands, and actually what happened is recorded, is that the temple that separated the holy of the holies from the normal places in the temple, the curtain that separated them was torn into two. Representing that the presence of God is now with his people. And so this is what Jesus has done. He's entered into the sacred place to give us a security with God that we cannot achieve on our own. Only Jesus is truly qualified to go into the Holy of the Holies. And not only does he go into the Holy of the Holies, but he pays our penalties so that we might go into them ourselves, so that we might be raised with him on high, so that we might have eternal life with God. This is the gospel. That Jesus goes where we cannot go, to give us what we cannot achieve.
Verse 20 continues this thought. It says, verse chapter 6 verse 20, says. Where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. Finally, next week Melchizedek, OK? That's just, it's leading us up. Next week, chapter 7, Melchizedek, that'll be the whole thing. I'm, I'm gonna punt on that one until then. it's actually not that hard. I've done it a few times here. but what it says in chapter in verse 19, in verse 20. Where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf. This word forerunner was often times used in an ancient civilization to to talk about a boat, a small boat that would carry the anchor for a larger boat. That could not fit into the harbor. The smaller boat would carry the anchor into the harbor and lay the anchor, so that the boat would be safe there. And so it's this forerunner, the one that carries the anchor forward, that goes where the larger boat cannot go to lead it to where it can, cannot go on its own.
Jesus is our forerunner. He has already carried our rope into the harbor of heaven, and hooked it to the throne of God. We're still out in the storm currently, but we're literally tethered to glory. Alright, it can it keeps going. That's just the first way that Jesus is an anchor for your soul. It is such a rich one.
Number 2, the second way that Jesus is an anchor for your soul. Jesus keeps you grounded when nothing else is going your way. Your anchor is the thing that keeps you grounded when everything else. And life is spinning. It's the thing that you can count on, when you can't count on anything else. Let's say that you're having a terrible day, maybe you get some negative feedback from your boss or one of your fellow coworkers is, is kind of a jerk to you. Let's say your neighbor yells at you for no apparent reason, whatever it might be. No, no experience with such things. Where, what do you, what do you do? Where do you go? What do you tell yourself to make yourself feel better? We usually start a, a phrase that goes like this, when we're having a bad day like this. At least I've got the Patriots game this afternoon to look forward to. At least I've got a family that loves me, that I can count on. At least I've got some financial security. At least my job pays well. The people might be jerks, but at least it's fulfilling if it doesn't pay well. At least I have some physical beauty left. At least I have a spouse that loves me.
These are anchors that you're tying yourself to. But friends, as good as all of these things are, they're all temporary. You might say, at least I have a family who loves me. Until something terrible happens. Like the guy who wrote it as well with my soul, and he lost his family in a boat in a in a boat, on a boating accident. None of them will last forever. I think it's, this is well articulated. This is a quote that I, I bring up every couple of years, and it's a good one, but you've probably heard it before. It's from the postmodern author David Foster Wallace, and he wasn't even a Christian, but he has such good perspective into the way that our hearts work on this.
And he said this at a commencement speech for Kenyon College, and this is what he says. Because here's something else that's weird but true. In the day to day trenches of adult life, there's actually no such thing as atheism, even though he himself was an atheist. He said, there's no such thing as atheism. There's no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of God or spiritual type thing to worship, is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.
That's what David Foster Wallace says. He says, if you worship money and things, if they are where you tap your real meaning in life. That's, that's what I'm saying means the anchor of the soul. Where you tap your real meaning, what gives you stability in life's stormiest days, where you tap your meaning in life. If you worship money and things, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you'll always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already, it's been codified as myths, proverbs, cliches, epigrams, parables, the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth upfront in your daily conscience. Worship power and you will end up feeling weak and afraid. And you will never, and you and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, and always on the verge of being found out. The summary, that that should just be the tagline of of Camberville, right? But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They're default settings.
What David Foster Wallace is saying is the same thing that the scriptures point out about our hearts is that we're looking for an anchor. We're looking for something to tie ourselves to that won't change, that we can depend upon day in and day out. And what he's telling us is this, that there's a lot of false anchors out there. And there's only one true anchor for your soul. Do you need stability for your wayward soul? Live for Christ. Everything else is temporary. Nothing else will satisfy. Live for Christ.
The third way that Jesus is an anchor for the soul. Is this Jesus gives you the ability to persevere with patience. One of the main times that in the ancient world you would use an anchor is if a storm was coming. at that time they had no idea when the storms were necessarily coming. They didn't have modern satellites to tell what was happening with the weather program, the weather programs, the weather, forecasts. And so what they, would do is just go out in the boat, and if they saw the clouds blowing up, they said, oh, a storm, we're in trouble. Because you had no way to control yourself during a storm. You would get often blown into rocks.
So what they would do is they would throw the anchor out so that they could stay in place, and they wouldn't get pushed into the rocks during the storm. The anchor gives you the ability to wait. It gives you the ability to wait through a storm. To persevere with patience. The author of Hebrews uses this, this passage to give us a story about Father Abraham. And he illustrates what we're talking about here. It's been a little while since I preached through Abraham. I preached Genesis maybe 2 or 3 years ago, but if you weren't here, let me give you a little recap on Abraham. Abraham, at this time, he was just called Abram. He was called by God to go and to a new country.
Now at this point, the there weren't, there isn't a people of Israel, because Abraham is the people of Israel. He's the first one that was called. That's why we call him Father Abraham. And he's the grandfather of the entire people of Israel, as we we see as the story plays out. And so he calls Abraham to Abraham to leave the country of Earth and go to a land that God would give him. Now, when Abraham, at this point, when he's 75 years old, his wife is 65 years old, they're still without children.
And God makes a promise to them at this time that you will have many descendants, that your descendants will be like the stars in the sky, or the sand on the beach. You will have that many descendants. Which had to make them laugh. You have to imagine Abraham and Sarah, they've, you have to imagine they've been married for quite a while, now they're old. I mean, who has a baby in their 60s and 70s as a man? Rarely. Would you ever hear of this? You have to imagine that their dreams in their 20s, their disappointments of their 30s, their heartbreaks of their 40s, and now God's showing up and saying you're gonna have a child, huh? They wait They wait, they receive the promise of God, and they wait and they wait 25 years, and there's no child. And Abraham turns 100 years old, Sarah, his wife, is 90 years old, and God appears again, and he says, I'm ready. They end up having a child, and they literally named him Isaac, which means he laughs. That God laughs as we think we have our lives figured out. You see Abraham and Sarah, they had to wait for the promise that God had promised them.
Let me read this passage, so that you know what's happening. Verse 13, For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore to himself, saying, surely I will bless you and multiply you. And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise. What are you waiting for? I feel like we're all kind of in a place of waiting. Some of us with that crushing disappointment that Abraham and Sarah were familiar with. What are you waiting for? A child, a healing, a job? A spouse, finances, respect, security. All good things.
But friends, many of us are disappointed in God. Because we're waiting on things that God never promised. And you can wait and you can pray for those things. But they're not what God promises you. Look at the scriptures. What are the things that God promises? He promises to give our lives meaning and purpose. He promises to give us abundant life. He promises to give us a love that we cannot be separated from. He promises that he will finish the work that he has begun in us. He promises us an eternal glory that far surpasses them all. What does he not promise? God never promises prosperity in this life. He never promises health, he never promises wealth. He never promises that faith will be easy. He never promises that his work in our lives will be quick.
Biblical Christianity values perseverance over prosperity. Biblical Christianity values perseverance over prosperity. Friends, God's promises demand patience. We live in an age of instant gratification. Which makes the slow work of God feel like the absence of God. And as we wait, we're putting ourselves into the place of Abraham, who's not waiting purposelessly. He's waiting while he's being shaped into the image that God wanted him to be. He's waiting. For God to do his work. Abraham's 25 year wait is a confrontation to our 25-second attention spans. That God often wants good for us, better than what we even imagine, but we have to wait. And friends, I'm telling you that having an anchor through the storms gives you the ability to wait with patience.
Number four. Lastly, Jesus is our anchor for the soul because Jesus is our source of truth. In fact, not just our source of truth, He is the source of truth. We live in a culture that values skepticism. In fact, most the best comedy out there is about is skepticism, just saying like why are we thinking that and kinda making fun of people who are gullible. And I think that's that's good in some ways. We don't want to be gullible, we want to ask. As important questions and maybe you're here today and you have big questions about faith and about who Jesus is and what he did, and we'd love to walk with you through those.
We want to use our brains, but at the same time, our culture usually frames truth as either subjective, my truth, what's true for me, or scientific, as in like look at the data. When the authors of scriptures frame truth as personal, as a person. Jesus doesn't just give the truth, he is the truth. And in fact, if you look to anything, you have to have some trust to find truth. You might say, I don't, I don't believe in faith, I believe in facts. But how do you come to believe those facts? You have to have some trust. You're like, oh, I just believe in science. Will you trust the empirical process that says that you can believe what your eyes see. You believe you have to have some trust to have any sort of faith, to have any sort of truth, you have to have trust. And this is why it says that. God is the highest form of truth.
Verse 16. what's happening here is when God's giving a promise to Abraham, he swears by something. And he has to find the highest thing he can swear by, the highest form of truth, so that Abraham will trust him. And so what does God do? Verse 16, 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 promise, he guaranteed it with an oath. And so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we have fled for refuge, my. We who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hopes set before us.
And so what does God do? He swears to his own name. He says, I am the highest form of truth, therefore you can trust me. Verse 18 tells us that we must hold fast to the hope set before us. Now what does it mean for us to trust in this form of truth, this anchor for our soul, this thing that we can depend upon at all times as unchanging? What does it mean for us to trust God as that source of truth? Well, it means that when he says it, we believe it. When he says do it, we do it. When he says follow, we follow. In love.
My family recently watched the original 1994 Aladdin, OK? And this is the theme throughout the whole thing is Aladdin. And in a climatic moment has to convince Jasmine to trust him. To say trust, do you trust me? And this is built up throughout the whole movie and the classic scene that we think about this is Aladdin comes in, he's standing on his magic carpet and he reaches out his hand and they're about to go on a magic carpet ride and see a whole new world and he says, do you trust me? And she looks up at him with those big eyes and bats her eyelashes and takes his hand and steps onto the the magic carpet. You see that the trust leads to this action. That she, she takes him at his word and does it.
Now, side note, OK, I just have to do this for a second. There's no reason she should have trusted him in that moment. I mean, he's not who he's saying he is. He just rode into town on a 50 ft tall elephant. He's, he's lying, he's saying he's the prince of some country that no one's ever heard of, and he's standing on an anthropomorphic rug, asking her to trust him to get friends. That's not love, that's like an origin story for a true crime podcast. Should not have trusted him, but she did, and so the, the point still holds. That when you are hearing truth when you trust someone. You will obey them. You will go along with them.
Trust requires obedience, even when you can't see the results. Even when you don't know what's gonna happen. If Jesus is the anchor for your soul, here's the thing about anchors, when they're in the water, you can't see them. Especially when the storm is going, it's murky. You have to trust that it can get you through. And friends, I don't know where you're at. I don't know what God's calling in your life. I don't know what you're going through. But hold on to that anchor. Hold tight to that anchor, it will not let you down. It will not let you down. Maybe you've been living for one of those false anchors. You've been looking in the wrong direction. It's time to put your eyes back on the one who goes behind the veil. Who hooks us to the throne of God.
Maybe you've been hesitant to trust God. Maybe you've been disappointed with God. I talk to people all the time. That's one of my number one things I talk about is just disappointment. I felt, I thought life was gonna go this way and it went that way. And what do I do? And you, you run up against this wall, and friends, there's a wall in our spiritual lives, and I'm telling you that the anchor goes behind the wall. And maybe you're to that point, and I know I've been there at times, where you just don't know what to do, but friends, keep holding tight. It might require changes. It might require changes in your attitude, your, your disposition, your emotional state. It might require you to hold on for dear life for through a lot. Keep holding on, it's worth it. There's no other source of truth. Hold on to what you know is true.
Maybe you're frustrated on waiting. Maybe you're you're saying, I've been holding on for so long, my hands, they hurt. Friends. What else are you gonna do? Let the boat, let the winds push you into the rocks, let life take you by. No, we just keep setting our eyes and we come around each other. You've got friends here that can hold the rope with you. Maybe you need to share some of the weight that you've been carrying. That's why we do this church thing. And I know the church can be disappointing. I, I say that and I'm like, some of you have church hurt and you've been disappointed, but I'm telling you. God is faithful. He is a strong anchor. And when you feel like you can't hold on anymore, you realize that he's holding on to you. That it's not about the strength of your grip, but it's about the love that he has for you.
I'm gonna give you an opportunity to respond. We'll have some folks in the back that will be willing to pray for you. I just wanna encourage you to to process what can you give to the Lord today? How can you place your hope in him? And we're gonna have an invitation to the table. And this table is kind of an anchor in our week, where we're reminded that Christ's body was broken for us and his blood was shed for us. And so each time we take of this, we're being physically reminded of these spiritual truths that Jesus died on our behalf, and that we have life with him. Over the next song, feel free to come up at any point and receive this meal. When you come and receive, you're saying, God, I trust you. I will follow you I will see things from your perspective. And trust that my anchor will hold. Would you stand as we pray and prepare ourselves for the table?
Father, as we come to the sacred meal today, would you prepare our hearts and help us to receive from you that that spiritual sustenance, that reminder of what you've done for us. Would you make our hearts new. And would you give us hope for tomorrow? Would you remind us of what you're doing and the important things in life? Would you give us the ability to persevere, to wait through life's storms? And God, I pray for those who are waiting here today, would they meet you in their waiting? Would they believe your promises? Would they see you as true? Would they depend upon you and see how you're holding on to them? We ask these things in Christ's name, Amen.