Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Anchors You? | New Testament | Hebrews 6

Episode Date: March 8, 2023

Stability is something everyone searches for. However, stability is hard to come by. Where do you look for steadiness in your life? In your job? In your marriage? In your grades? In today's episode, Jensen looks at Hebrews 6 to discuss the steadfastness of God's promises. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Hebrews 6

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jensen Holt McNair. We're all looking for stability in life, aren't we? Some people find it in settling down and starting a family. Maybe you'll feel stable once you have a place to call home. Stability for you might be a sizable 401K or a solid retirement plan. Stability might mean just having a job or a solid group of friends. Stability is something we want, but it's hard.

hard to come by, because let's be honest, life isn't very stable. The last few years with COVID wars, elections, and inflation should prove that to us if nothing else. I was reading the blog of a young staff writer for a television production company and came across her views on stability. She gives advice to find anchors in certain parts of life that make you happy. But ultimately, she comes to this conclusion. I needed to find peace with the fact that we can't rely on stability. Stability will ghost us, knock us on our backside and leave us out in the cold. Instead of relying on stability, we rely on ourselves. Yes, a calm home base. Friends that anchor us, our innermost goals and staying focused on the end game can help us strengthen ourselves. But at the

end of the day, we should expect a bumpy ride. The less startled we are when the first massive bump hits, the better. We are expecting it after all. I hope this perspective comes across not as nihilistic, but empowering. We are strong enough to survive the ups and downs of this lifetime. We truly have no other option. It's life. We're not getting out of here alive. Now, in some ways, I admire her conclusion. She looks out at the certainty of death, the uncertainty of life, and admits essentially, we can't put our hope in stability. It isn't going to happen. Life won't be stable. Cling to what you can to make it through until you die. It's interesting. Although she admits that you can't rely on stability, she still grasps for anchors to hold on to.

There's something within her that knows we cannot live long under the depressing realization that life isn't stable and death is inevitable. And so she opens the door for us to all continue doing what we've always been doing, searching for anchors to tether our lives to, to make us feel stable. For her, it's family, friends, life goals. But we all fill in our own anchors, don't we? 401Ks, homes, jobs, degrees. The problem is that the anchors we so tightly cling to aren't really anchors because they aren't stable, constant, grounded things

that we can lean on, depend on, put our hope in. People die. Markets crash. Dreams change. Layoffs happen. Children grow up and leave the house and all of our stability comes crashing down. The best stability that the world can offer us is an unstable coping mechanism.

A better conclusion may have been, life isn't stable, get used to it. It'll all be over soon. But that's not her conclusion, because as humans, we were created by the God of creation to hope. The problem is that we often put our hope in the wrong things. We tie ourselves to faulty anchors and we conclude that stability is impossible in an unstable world. Thankfully, Hebrews has something very different to say on the subject. Rather than tether ourselves to the changing uncertain things around us, the author of Hebrews urges us to tether ourselves to the promises of God. Let's pick up in chapter 6 verse 11.

And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness, to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. 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 waited patiently, obtained the promise. So in verse 11, we learned that the author wants his audience to live lives of earnestness in the faith, not being sluggish, but imitating those before them who had absolute hope that they would inherit the promises of God.

These people will live out faithful, stable, earnest lives of faith because they have put their hope in the promise of God's inheritance. And he then continues in verse 13 to give evidence that their hope is not put in the wrong place. He reminds them that God promised Abraham to give him a son, to build a nation from his descendants, to be their God and to bring them into a promised land. And Abraham waited patiently until he obtained the promise of a son. He had Isaac. And while Abraham died before Israel became a great nation and entered the promised land, we know that God ultimately did fulfill this promise, because a promise from God is certain. 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 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. Unlike humans who swear by oaths to show that they're not lying and will be faithful, God cannot lie. And so his word is enough. If he says it, he will do it. And yet, he doubly promises by making an oath with his people. He does so so that his people, stuck in an unstable, ever-changing world, might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. God has made a promise to his people. And verse 19 tells us that. 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. The final verse of this chapter, verse 20, reminds us of what these promises of God are.

Jesus who has gone before us through death and into a final resurrection, becoming the high priest, who made the final sacrifice for the sins of all humanity, has secured our purification and ultimate resurrection into the kingdom of God. That, that is what we put our hope in. We have a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul. This anchor cannot be moved. It comes with a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain. See, the curtain here is referencing the curtain that stood in the ancient temple.

This curtain separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple. This was the place where God's presence dwelt, where only the high priest could enter once a year. And yet, in Jesus' death, that curtain was torn in half, cast open wide so that all could enter and draw near to God through Jesus' death. Our hope is not built on anchors that sway in tumultuous waves. It is anchored in the absolute certainty that Jesus has gone before us and made a way for us to follow him into resurrected life with our king in his kingdom for all of eternity. When life is unstable, when layoffs happen and people die and markets crash and roofs cave in and dreams get knocked off course, nothing in the world. could possibly ever move the unchanging, everlasting, steadfast anger of God's promises. You and I have been offered a lifeline.

But this lifeline isn't one we just cling to as tightly as we can, hold up until Jesus comes back or we die. No, this anger is there to root us in the hope and stability of God's promises so that we can go out and live earth. earnest, faithful lives like those who have come before us in the faith. You see, when God called Abraham, he promised to bless him with a nation and a promised land so that his people could go out and bless all the nations, living faithful and generous lives, sharing God's goodness with the world around them. We, too, have that same call. The blessing of hope in God's stable promises

comes with a call to live faithful lives for the glory of God in a world that is constantly in upheaval, where certainty and stability is hard to come by, where despair and anxiety seem to be the constant norm, you have been given a steadfast anchor so that you can go out and spread that hope as far and wide as you possibly can. Trust me, it will not take long before you face the instability of life. cling to the promise that you have a greater and future hope to sustain you. And when those around you face the same upheaval, the same uncertainty, point them towards the certainty we have in Christ alone.

In a world of instability and anxiety, may we always hold fast to the steadfast anchor of God's promises. Before you forget, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talks newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes, and you'll get an email every Wednesday that will help encourage you in the middle of the work week and bring you deeper in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for listening.