Unbreakable Hope

In the chaos of a broken world, a God of order gives us unbreakable hope.

Well, hello and good morning. So good to be with you. My name is Brian. I’m one of the pastors here. Art is an interesting thing, and it rarely takes the world by storm like this particular piece has over the last couple of years. In 2016, at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, this was the first installation of this piece. It’s by a Chinese art duo named Yuan and Yu, and it’s entitled Can’t Help Myself. What you see is basically a room full of windows that encapsulates a robot, and this robot has an arm. And at the end of the arm is a squeegee sort of a device. And what the robot is programmed to do is to pull that brownish reddish fluid back into itself. And it turns out that this fluid is hydraulic fluid that the robot needs in order to function. But in an artistic and social commentary, what the artists cleverly did is they cut the lines of the hydraulic fluid so that every time the robot pulls the fluid into itself, it just seeps out the bottom again. And the robot is made then to have a life that is just frivolous, constantly pulling this fluid into itself, only for it to seep out again. And as this piece was on display for a few years, the robots started slowing down and getting dirtier. And people felt a deep, deep connection with it. It was put in New York in 2016. It was reinstalled in Venice in 2019. But over the last year or so, it has been shared tens of millions of times on social media.

And while the museum goers appreciated it, I think it was the world of the Internet that really brought it to the fore. And whenever something like that happens, we have to ask the question, like, what is this speaking toward? Why is this speaking to people’s hearts? Why are they having, you know, a love affair with a robot? Why are they feeling so empathetic and connected to this inanimate object? And I think it’s a fairly self-revealing answer, isn’t it? It’s that we feel like this robot. Because we feel like the world is broken, don’t we? We live in this broken world. You would agree, right, that it’s a broken world that we live in. And I don’t mean is it more broken than when you were a kid? I mean it from a deeper theological perspective. We know that the world is broken, that once it was something beautiful and we still see shards and moments of that beauty. But we also know that what we have now mustn’t be what it always was, that once before it was better. We live in a world of death and war, of famine and pestilence and pain and poverty and certainly sin. And we live in it. And the problem is we also contribute to it, don’t we? Like we make choices that cause pollution. We have spending habits that oppress people groups throughout the world because our clothes are cheap. We are a part of the brokenness and it’s not hard to see. Right? We turn on the news and everything on there is broken and the news itself is broken. And if we watch too much news, we get more broken and some of us need to turn off the news. But I digress. So if we’re living in brokenness and we’re a part of the brokenness and we’re causing some of the brokenness, what are we supposed to do with that? Are we supposed to start fixing it? Are we supposed to walk away from the brokenness? Although I’m not entirely sure how one would do that. Or are we supposed to grow old and die of exhaustion trying? What are we supposed to do? As a follower of Jesus, there are probably times when we should do all those things. Circumstances that would call for any of those.

But I think the most important thing to do with the brokenness first is to put it into perspective. And so that leads us to our big idea for today, which is this: in the chaos of a broken world, a god of order gives us unbreakable hope. I’d like to read for you and with you today from Hebrews 6, where you can go if you’d like, in your own Bible, but it will be up on the screen as well. And we’ll be reading Hebrews 6:13-20: “For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying, ‘Surely I will bless you and multiply you.’ And thus, Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise. For people swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation. So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of His purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the Order of Melchizedek.”

Ok, so starting back at verse 13. We read here about this promise that God made to Abraham. And here’s the thing about promises: we make promises to try to bring order to chaos. We do it all the time. I know you’re disappointed. I can’t play with you right now, but I promise you later I will. I promise you it will get better. I promise you for $29.99, I can change your life, right? This is what we do. We speak to people’s sense of out of control and chaos. And so we make a promise. And here the author of Hebrews is quoting from the Abrahamic Covenant. That’s a good word, Abrahamic, the Abrahamic Covenant, where in Genesis 22, it says, ‘Surely I will bless you and multiply you’; God says to Abraham. God is basically promising Abraham heirs and a legacy. That’s what he’s promising him, which is really what a lot of us want. Heirs and a legacy. That’s not a bad deal for Abraham. I think. So why does God make these promises to Abraham? He certainly doesn’t need to. It’s not something God is obligated to do, but God in his graciousness, decides that a promise will work as an anchor for the soul of Abraham and Sarah. He’s preparing them for difficult times. And so by way of reminder, let’s talk about the back story of Abraham and Sarah. Of course, they are a couple like many couples, who dream of having a child and they’re not able to. And then they get older and a little older. And Abraham is 99 and Soraya is 90, and God tells them, I will make from you many great nations, and around this time next year you’ll have a child. Of course, they thought they were already past childbearing years. They thought that whole idea, that ship had sailed, but God made a promise, and He came through, and Isaac is born. And then Isaac marries Rebecca. And eventually, over time we read in Genesis that God does exactly what he had promised to do. He made many people in many nations from Abraham. When Abraham and Sarah felt the life they wanted was completely out of their control, when their dreams were in complete chaos, God gave them hope through a promise that He made to them. He used the promise to give them hope. He used the promise to bring order to their chaos. And so then in verse 15 it says, and thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise. So Abraham did get what he wanted and not to criticize Scripture, but the ‘patiently waited part’, I take a little bit of issue with you. I don’t know how patient Abraham really was. We got the whole Hagar situation going on there. That doesn’t sound like patience to me, but maybe we need to go to the traditional translation of the word patience, which is long suffering. And if indeed Abraham long suffered, that I can agree with, Abraham had to wait a long time for his wishes to be fulfilled and for God’s promise to come through the way that they thought it was going to. It felt like chaos to Abraham. But in the light of historical reflection, we see the beauty of how God’s plan unfolded, because in the chaos of a broken world, God of order gives us unbreakable hope. And Abraham’s life is a beautiful example of this. In fact, it’s kind of breathtaking to realize that the writer of Hebrews talking about Abraham actually has a better perspective on this than even Abraham did. See, God made the promise to Abraham, and he got to be there and witness that, and that part was good and helpful. But if you think about it, Abraham only got to see the first half of the promise fulfilled. You’re going to have an error, and I’m going to make from you many nations. Well, he saw his son be born. That part he saw play out and he sees Isaac and Rebecca getting married. And so there’s hope for the future. But he doesn’t get to see his line become a great nation. The author of Hebrews is writing, you know, this is first century authorship. So we’re talking at least many hundreds of years later. The author of Hebrews is in a better place to comment on God’s faithfulness to Abraham than even Abraham was. And that’s a beautiful reality. That’s a very cool thing. With history, we get to see that God was indeed faithful the way that He promised to be.

In verse 16, it says ‘for people swear by something greater than themselves. And in all their disputes, an oath is final for confirmation”. So to bring a greater sense of order in our worlds, we’ve all tried to give ourselves greater position and authority based on who we’re associated with. This showed up in my neighborhood as a kid: sometimes it sounded something like this. My dad could beat up your dad. Sometimes that would get through. I don’t understand why, but my kids have never said that, I don’t think. I don’t know why I didn’t like that. You all just laughed at that. Okay, but we see this as grownups, too, don’t we? I mean, this is why we put degrees up on our walls. And I’m not criticizing. I’m just saying it might be like, well, maybe you’ve never heard of me, but have you heard of such and such university? We associate ourselves with these things, right? And this game of appealing to authority is something that apparently was true in the ancient world in the time of the writer of Hebrews lived as well. Now in the second half of this verse, it might be helpful to read the word ‘oath’ like the word ‘contract’. It’s not just a promise. It’s actually a contract when you’re unsure or if there’s conflict. What you need to do is go back to what was originally said. It could be the contract, the Constitution, the employee’s manual. This is what we do when we’re not sure, we go back to the original. And so what the author of Hebrews is inviting us to do is go back to the original promise. What did God say? He said to Abraham, I will bless you and multiply you. When God makes a promise, he keeps it perfectly. When God makes a promise, it will not and cannot be broken. If the contract said it, it will happen. It’s a guarantee. And one of the things we see here when we consider this is we are reminded that God is different than you or I and praise God for that. Right? Despite our best intentions, we break our promises sometimes. And by the way, in so doing, we create more chaos in the world. But not God. His promises always come through. Abraham’s situation seemed to be full of barriers for the completion of God’s promise, but in those times of weakness, Abraham forgot with whom he was dealing. These things were not actually barriers for God because nothing is impossible for God. His oath, his promise, his contract. Those are greater than any circumstance that Abraham or any of us might ever face. They’re even greater than death. His promises, God’s promises bring order in a life of chaos. And those promises aren’t just for Abraham. He makes promises to all of his people as well. This passage refers to them as the heirs of his promise. So let’s read on to look at that. So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of His 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. That is one sentence.

So let’s parse that out just a little bit because it’s all over the place. And I think that this little bit is saying three key things. First, God made a promise, and a guarantee, and he can’t lie, so he’s good for it. That’s the first one. The second, God graciously worked to convince his heirs that he can be trusted even though he didn’t need to. It was good of him. And third, those who trust in him will not only receive what he has given, but also will be encouraged by unbreakable hope, because he is strong and trustworthy and good.

So with that as our backdrop, I think this part of the passage begs a list of questions. First, what is an heir? An heir? Here’s the little dictionary definition: a person legally entitled to the property or rank of another on that person’s death, or a person inheriting and continuing the legacy of a predecessor. Heirs even in common usage of the word are not always sons and daughters, of course. Legally, someone can choose any person as their heir, and sometimes, as the definitions indicate, heirs are heirs in essence, if not even in legal standing. Maybe it’s just someone who sort of carries the torch of the person who came before. And so that’s what an heir is. But then it begs the question, so who are the heirs to whom this passage is referring? And I think that verse 18 offers an underrated and beautifully humble description. It says, “We who have fled for refuge”. The heirs are those who have fled for refuge in the promises of Jesus. If we are indeed saved by grace through faith, it isn’t a place of prominence and pride among our fellow humans. This isn’t something we should brag about. We just knew where to flee to, where to take refuge in light of our sinful condition, and of God’s coming wrath. We aren’t special among people just because we know where the bomb shelter is. And because of that, we should interact with all of humanity, no matter what choices they’re making with their life, no matter whether or not they love Jesus, too. We should interact with humanity in a way that is loving and kind and gracious, because we know that we couldn’t save ourselves. We had to flee for refuge. And if we know where to go, we can point others in the same direction. Hopefully, this is a way to simply encourage, entice and invite others to take safe refuge in who Jesus is.

We who have fled for refuge are simply those who have put our trust and faith in the resurrected Jesus. That’s it. That’s it. You don’t have to behave in any particular way. You don’t have to vote any particular way. It’s Jesus plus nothing. That’s what we’re talking about here. That’s who it is. Those who have fled for refuge. And what the writer of Hebrews is reminding us is that faithfulness has been the entry to heaven for all of time even back to the time of Abraham. Abraham was faithful, and that’s why we know he is in heaven.

So third, what do the heirs get? What do they get? And let’s just be honest, and some of you have intimate experience with this. Being an heir can kind of go either way. You know what I’m saying? Like, it depends on what’s being left behind. Sometimes if you’re an heir, it’s like, here’s a pile of money in assets, and you’re like, Woohoo!  And sometimes it’s like a distant relative left you a bunch of junk in an attic, and you’re like, Oh, right. And so here’s the point. The better the stuff the person is leaving behind, the better the stuff you get as an heir. This is the dumbest theological point I’m going to make all morning. But God stuff is the best stuff there is, right? If it’s from him, if he left it behind for us, it’s good and valuable and worth it. It’s not junk. He only leaves us good things. So that’s what heirs of the promise get. And so if it’s good stuff, then I want to know, how did the heirs get it? How do they get the thing? Well, the passage says that it’s by two unchangeable things, and I believe that those two unchangeable things are God’s character and God’s promise. God’s character is that he’s infinitely good. He’s not flawed in any way. His ways are right and righteous and good. And the second is God’s promise. If he says it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. His promises always happen. He can’t lie about who he is or about what promises he will make. So God is always good. We are flawed. We are different than God. God always keeps His promises, we do not. We are limited, even with good intentions. Sometimes we can’t keep our promises. We promise we’re going to be somewhere and our car breaks down. We think we’re going to be able to commit to that thing. And then, I don’t know, we die or something; that could happen. We could break a promise because we die. God is different than us. God is different. He can’t fail in fulfilling his promises. He always come through. So God is not limited. He is different and in the best way possible. So heirs receive, because of God’s perfect character and his perfect promise. And now we get to the t-shirt slogan part of the passage. We have this as a short 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. So the promises of God which always are fulfilled, and the character of God, which is always good, creates for us something beautiful and unique. And the thing they create for us is the hope of God through the work of Jesus. And these things together, what do they do? What does hope do for us? It creates for us a steadfast anchor of the soul.

So there’s sort of three pictures that we see here in this part of the passage. The first is the idea of an anchor. So first, let’s remove ourselves from our modern brains for a moment and remember that we’re talking about the ancient world. There wasn’t a lot of computer programming happening at the time of the writing of Hebrews. There wasn’t even much law or medicine. There were certainly no YouTubers or social media influencers. Those were not jobs available. There were only a handful of jobs that anyone could ever make money at. And fishermen in the Mediterranean Rim was one of the most important. Having a boat and being able to fish was potentially a matter of life and death. It certainly could have been a matter of making money or not. And it really, really mattered. If you didn’t have a good anchor for your boat and a storm came, you would lose your boat. And that would be a problem. If any of you own a boat and a storm took it away. It would be a bummer for your weekend, but it’s not a matter of life and death. A good anchor was essentially important to the livelihood and life of the people at this time. So boats were important. Now, what does an anchor do? An anchor, of course, keeps a boat where it’s supposed to be. And so an anchor for the soul helps keep our soul where it’s supposed to be, and I don’t think that there was like a problem of the soul disappearing off into the sky somewhere or something like that. It’s not that it’s not attaching to our bodies. The problem is that we stray in our hearts and minds, isn’t it? That we so easily forget in what we should have our hope. Now, the thing about an anchor is that it has to be securely fastened on both ends in order to be effective. So you’ve got the metal bit that goes down to the sea floor. These are the promises of Jesus. They’re consistent. We know that they’re there. They can be counted on. Promises of Jesus. That’s the sea floor. That’s one end, and it has to be securely fastened there. And Jesus handled that. So we know that we’re good. The other end of the anchor has to be tied securely to the boat. And I read that to be our faith. How much do we trust in Jesus? How much do we trust him with our life? Do we give him our Sunday mornings and a couple of other things from our week? But the rest of it is over here and this is mine. God, and you can’t have it. Or do we trust him with everything? Do we go all in? The more we trust Jesus, the more securely the anchor is tied to the boat. And you need both for it to work. Otherwise you’ve got an anchor down on the floor and a boat floating off into who knows where. The point is this: having an anchor in a storm firmly secured is order in chaos. And that’s the point, isn’t it? So that’s the anchor. The second thing is hope and hope is one of these words we use a lot, but it’s a little bit ethereal and a little bit hard to understand and grasp. And so I wanted to use this picture of a baseball pitcher because I wanted to point out that hope is a dependent idea, kind of like how throwing is a dependent idea. Here’s what I mean. You can’t throw at nothing. Whenever you throw, you’re throwing at something, and hope works the same way. If you have hope, you’re directing it at something. And the question is whether or not we are directing our hope at the correct thing, at the right thing, at the thing that is most appropriate. Hope must have an object. And so the question is. What is your hope in? There’s a lot of things that it could be. There’s a lot of choices that people make, including ourselves, when we put hope in our career, in our money, in our retirement savings, in our prestige, in our family, these are all things that by themselves are not bad things, but they are not ultimate things. And none of those things are worthy of our hope, the way that Jesus is worthy of our hope. Let’s be honest. We all drift on this sometimes. Sometimes we all, even with good intentions, are like some of those ridiculous celebrities that throw out the first pitch of the game. And it ends up like in left field. Right? We throw our hope at all kinds of things and it is very easy to drift. And so we should never be anything but humble about misdirected hope. The third picture here is sort of two things in one, it’s the high priest and the curtain and these go together.

Remember, this is the letter to the Hebrews. That’s who the audience is. And so this is a people who understand the Old Testament sacrificial system. And in that system, if you sinned, you would confess that sin and repent of that sin. But it couldn’t be atoned for unless the High Priest once a year on Yom Kippur would go on the other side of the curtain into the holy of holies to make penance for that sin. And when we think of Curtain, don’t think of your grandma’s drapes. This is a little bit more serious than that. This curtain was very thick. It was very tough. You couldn’t easily, like, cut it or break through it. And the key point was that it was like a barrier. There was God’s side over here and humanity’s side over here, and they needed to be kept separate because a holy God could not be in the presence of an unholy people. And there needed to be this break. It was the original social distancing to avoid death. So there was this curtain and it kept God’s side and humanity side different. And so these people who were receiving this letter, they knew that that’s how this worked. And what the writer of Hebrews is saying is, Ok, I know that in your world you think you need a high priest. Will you have one. You have Jesus. And He is better for a couple of reasons. For one, he is your high priest forever, which is handy because the other ones keep dying and then you have to replace them and it’s a whole thing. So he’s forever. But the other reason that he’s better is that he goes as a forerunner on your behalf. And this is this next part is complete conjecture on my part. But Yom Kippur happened once a year. Right? So what happened, do you suppose, if it was like Yom Kippur happened? Yeah. And then the next day some guy got up in the nation of Israel and he sinned real bad. He’s thinking, I got to wait 364 more days in order for this to be atoned for? That would be nerve-wracking. Like what if he died in the meantime? I think it would be a lack of assurance. Right? See, Jesus is different, and Jesus is better because he doesn’t retroactively deal with sin. He both retroactively and future activities that a word future-actively deals with sin. He goes as a forerunner on your behalf. He deals with your sin even before you send the sin. And that is good news, my friends. That is good news. And that gives us this beautiful and wonderful assurance. He is a better high priest. He’s an anchor for the soul. He’s a hope worth aiming for. He’s a better high priest. And then there’s this last little phrase, which, frankly, should be a whole other sermon. And I haven’t got time for all of it, but let’s just look at it for a moment.

It says that he’s a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. So here’s the part of the sermon where I ask you and invite you to do some study on your own of this very obscure but interesting character in Scripture that we know as Melchizedek. If you continue reading in Hebrews 7, you’ll get some good description of sort of who he is. It helps put it into perspective, which is good because in Genesis where we first meet him, when he interacts with Abraham, we get very little detail and it’s a very odd exchange. Here’s what happens. Abraham, I think it’s Genesis 22, I could be wrong on that. Don’t quote me, but you can find it. Abraham actually goes out as a military leader. He has to go save his relative Lot because Lot’s always getting into trouble. Lot gets captured by this group of kings. And so Abraham leads an army and saves Lot and brings him back. And so here Abraham is a successful general. He’s won this military battle, and he comes back.  And this guy shows up named Melchizedek, and Abraham gives him a 10th of everything he had won in battle and interacts with him. And by the way, Melchizedek brings out bread and wine (sensing a theme yet?) And there’s this just very short but significant exchange. And so suffice it to say this: the name Melchizedek translates to king of righteousness, king of peace. And what most scholars believe is that this is one of the earliest depictions of a pre-incarnate Jesus, Jesus before Jesus was born in a manger. Here was Jesus interacting with, showing up, talking with Abraham and Abraham honored him and acted faithfully toward him. And I think the reason the writer of Hebrews even brings it up is that he’s demonstrating that ever since the time of Abraham, it has been faith and trust in God that means everything.

So in summary. Jesus is the anchor of our soul. He is our safety, our security, and the protection of our very lives. He is our hope. Jesus is the only thing worthy of throwing our hope and trust and expectation toward, because he will never let us down. And he is our high priest, the one who can transcend the barrier between God and man. And these are promises He has been keeping, and hope he has been providing, since the beginning of time. Since our father, his father, his father’s father, his father’s father Abraham. He was there then as Melchizedek. He’s here with you now. So. So what? Right. What is. What is anything of that have to do with you and with me? Well, because sometimes we feel intimately connected to a robot. Because we feel the frivolousness and the hopelessness of our lives. And there’s all this chaos and all this brokenness. And we ask ourselves, what am I supposed to do with that? I can’t intelligently comment on all of the ways the world is broken. I don’t have the time or the wisdom. I can’t even comment on all the ways that you feel the brokenness within yourself, the things you’re facing, the things you’re challenged by. But I don’t need to, because you have an intimate understanding of those things yourself. But there’s a couple of things I would say.

What is this? Sometimes the chaos we feel and the brokenness we experience happens outside of us. We live in a broken, sinful world, and some of those things are beyond us. But some of those things are within us. And there our fault. All right. Everything happens for a reason, but sometimes that reason is you’re dumb and you make bad choices. Sin can negatively affect your life and create chaos in your world. But there’s another way you can create chaos in your world. And this is what I would say. Some of you today are distant from God or more distant than you should be, because you are angry with him for not keeping a promise that he never made to you. There are a lot of things that God does promise us He says I’ll never leave you or forsake you. He says I have heaven prepared and ready for you if you will repent and turn toward me. There are promises that he makes, but he didn’t promise you that you wouldn’t get sick. And he didn’t promise you that you wouldn’t lose that loved one. And he didn’t promise you that promotion, and he didn’t promise you a lot of things. And if we choose to be angry with God about promises He never made, not going fulfilled, then we’ve created a fabricated disappointment. And we’re going to create a chaos in our lives that we don’t need, and God doesn’t deserve. So what I said earlier, I’ll say again. The first thing to do with brokenness is to put it into perspective. The hope we’re talking about today. The hope of salvation and sanctification of Jesus is everything we need. Everything, no matter your circumstance, no matter your trouble, no matter what is heavy on your heart today, not even death itself can defeat the promises of God. See, an anchor doesn’t mean there is no storm. In fact, an anchor assumes that there will be. An anchor assumes that there will be problems, that there will be wind and waves trying to push you off course, trying to distract you from who Jesus is. And if you’re not experiencing them now, you have before or you will soon, or all of the above, an anchor assumes problems. To think that you deserve a life without trouble, challenge failure, is the stuff of children.

Is that what God promised you? God didn’t promise you easy. He promised you His presence. Those are not the same thing. And so if you’re not trusting every part of your life to Jesus, why not? Why not? It doesn’t matter how many years you’ve been on this planet, it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been walking with Jesus. The question is really, how much of your life are you giving over to him? Are you holding on to some of it yourself? For yourself? Or are you giving it all to him? Jim Elliott, the famous missionary, once wrote in his journal, He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose. Because in the chaos of a broken world, a god of order gives us unbreakable hope. And thank God for that. Let’s pray.

Lord, we thank you that you are good and lovely and wonderful, that you are trustworthy. That we can give you our hearts, our lives, our decisions, our relationships, all of those things, God, if we trust them to you, they will be better and go better. I pray that we would repent of the arrogance of our own position that we think we know better, better than you. What a silly thing that is. I pray that each of us would have our soul anchored in you. That we would trust you with our heart, soul, mind and strength. This in Jesus name. Amen.