This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

This is day five together of our week of hope, our week at looking at Hebrews
chapter six. Verses 18 to 20 today are all about hope. Let me read those verses
for you before we dive into what these have to say to us today.

Verses 18 to 20, "God did this, made an oath we talked about yesterday, God did
this so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to
lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly
encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It
enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain where Jesus who went before us has
entered on our behalf.

He has become a high priest forever in the order of Melchizedek. " Someone on
our research team who writes in to me questions they have about the chapter
every week and helps me to think about how to best teach the answers to these
questions from the chapter. Someone wrote in this week and said, "How do we
seize the hope each day?

In times of heartbreak and confusion and overwhelming sadness, how do we hold on
to the hope? " I love those questions because they're really what this whole
chapter is about, holding on to hope as you recognize that God is holding on to
you. This week we've talked about already four ways that you and I hold on to
the hope that God has given us.

We don't build hope in our lives. We don't manufacture hope in our lives. God
gives it to us, but how do I hold on to it?

How do I experience it? Well, first, I go on to maturity. I don't settle for
just the foundation, arguing and questioning.

I go on to the maturity that God wants to build into my relationships and my
character and my service for others. Second thing we talked about is having a
healthy fear of falling away, having a healthy fear of my own frailties, a
healthy fear of the world and what it can do to me. Third thing we talked about
is being diligent until the very end.

Not that that makes your hope, creates your hope, but it caused you to see your
hope as you're diligent. Third thing we talked about yesterday is waiting on the
promises of God. That's how you experience hope in your life and you realize
that even while you're waiting, God is working.

And today, this incredible passage about hope, if I'm going to experience hope,
I've got to let hope anchor my soul. I've got to let it anchor my soul. And I
love verse 18.

Did you notice that phrase in verse 18? We who have fled to take hold of the
hope. That fascinates me, that phrase "fled.

" We are running somewhere. We are running away from something, that's what it
means to flee to the hope that God has given us. Now what does that mean, that
we're running away from something to something?

No one knows exactly what he meant here. Some people say, well maybe he's
talking about the Old Testament where they would flee to a city of refuge. You
might remember that they had these cities where if you committed a crime, you
could flee there and then you would have hope.

Maybe, but the problem with that is you were trapped in that city the rest of
your life. You were fleeing to a kind of prison. I like better the picture of
the children of Israel fleeing from Egypt to the promised land.

I think that may be more what he's thinking about here because he just talked
about Abraham, just talked about receiving the promise of the land that God had
given and the son that God had given that would be his inheritance. The flight
from Egypt, from those things that had enslaved them, towards the promised land,
the promise of God's presence in their lives, that's a picture. And that's part
of how you and I experience hope.

You have to flee from something to something to experience hope. And you do it
in the first place when you ask Christ into your life and you begin a
relationship with him and he with you. But you also do it day by day as you flee
from the things of this world and you run to him.

So the Bible says you flee youthful lust and you pursue righteousness, faith,
love and peace with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. That's what it
means to run to him. You run to him.

And in that, he says, in that you're going to find that you have hope as an
anchor for the soul, firm and secure. Now that word secure is an interesting
word. It comes from the same word as the word confirmed in verse 17, where the
Bible says God confirmed this with an oath.

Here it says he secured it as an anchor. What's confirmed with an oath becomes
secured as an anchor in our lives. And this anchor, it was a popular symbol in
the early church of our hope.

In the catacombs where the first Christians sometimes awaited death, there have
been counted at least 66 different pictures of anchors picturing the hope that
we have. And this hope is in Jesus. In verse 20, where Jesus, who went before
us, has entered on our behalf.

He talks about the inner sanctuary. We talked about this before in the book of
Hebrews. This is the Holy of Holies in the temple, the curtain that was in front
of that Holy of Holies that, remember we talked about it being torn in two so
that God was saying I'm changing my address.

You can enter in and being in my presence. And then there's this picture here
where Jesus, who went before us, entered on our behalf. Remember that Holy of
Holies, the high priest could only enter once a year and only on the behalf of
everybody else and then they would have to come out.

They would make offering for the sins of the people then they would come out.
But here Jesus entered before us, not for us, not just for us, but before us.
What it's saying here is Jesus not only entered on our behalf, he is taking us
in with him.

That's amazing. That's hope that anchors your soul. Now, what kind of hope is
this, the kind of hope that we need to be an anchor in our uncertainty?

What the writer of Hebrews is saying here is you and I can be sure even when
life is not sure because our anchor is not in the circumstances of this world.
We all need confidence to face life's uncertainties. Do you have that kind of
confidence?

Maybe you're facing in your life a time when you really want to accomplish
something, something truly important, but before you've really gotten started,
you're engulfed right now with these thoughts of failure or feelings that you
couldn't possibly succeed. Where do you find a kind of confidence to go on?
Where do you find hope in that circumstance?

Well, you don't find it in the circumstance. You find it in the anchor. Maybe
you've tried to break a bad habit, but your first attempts to break that habit
were invaded by thoughts and realities that you could not possibly keep that
resolve.

Where do you find the hope to trust God once again? Where do you find the hope
to get around other people who are trying in their lives to follow that same
path? Maybe you've found yourself to be a person who makes grand promises, but
constantly you procrastinate.

And you can never live out the kind of life that you know God has for you to
live. Maybe this comes down to your relationships, your marriage. And lately
you've been thinking, "Well, I've got no hope for a good marriage.

That's just the way she is. " Or, "He's never going to change. " Or maybe in
relationships it's about your children, and you're flooded with anxiety over
their future.

How do you find hope in the midst of those realities of life? You need more than
a change in your current circumstances because they don't always change. They do
not always change.

And even when they do change, they don't change fast enough. Have you noticed
that? You and I need a hope that's beyond those circumstances.

And here we're given the picture. It's like a ship on the sea. Without an
anchor, it is a victim of the wind and the waves.

It's a victim of the circumstances. But with an anchor, it can survive the
storms. We all need an anchor within.

The certain hope of being saved is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our
souls. Living Bible translates this verse, verse 18 to 19. Without an anchor,
when life is calm, you will drift.

And when life is stormy, you will crash. You need an anchor even when life is
calm. You'll just drift if you don't have an anchor.

You might say, in one case you'll be drifting, in the other case you would be
driftwood. Crashed or drifting, but not living the life that God has for you to
live. Ships that, by the way, usually have more than one anchor, a light anchor
for occasional or brief use, and a working anchor, and then a storm anchor.

We need a storm anchor. And Jesus Christ can be that anchor in our
circumstances. So how does hope become our anchor?

Well, we've seen it all through this passage. We've seen it all through the book
of Hebrews to this point. Hope becomes our anchor when you and I discover God's
purpose, accept God's promise, and enter God's presence.

You discover God's purpose. We talked earlier in this passage about being sure
of God's purpose. God has a purpose for your life.

Have you discovered that purpose? That is part of the hope, the anchor that God
has, living out that purpose. Hope becomes our anchor when we accept God's
promise.

Even though it's a promise that we have to wait on in some cases, you accept and
you live based on God's promise rather than running ahead of God all of the
time. The promise of salvation, the promise of new, eternal life. Have you
accepted God's promise?

And then there is entering into God's presence, which is the focus here. It
enters into the inner sanctuary. Jesus takes us in behind the curtain.

Now, many of us, we see this phrase behind the curtain, and it sounds like hope
is going backstage somehow. He's not talking about a stage here. He's talking
about a temple, and He's talking about opening up the most holy place.

I know many people, when they come to this issue of hope, they would say, "I
know there's a purpose. I'm trying to live out that purpose. In fact, I know
I've accepted His promise.

I know I've asked Jesus into my life, but I still feel so hopeless so much of
the time. What's wrong? What's wrong?

" For many believers today, what's missing is this experience of the presence of
God. We get so busy living out God's purposes. We get so busy telling even
others about God's promises that we don't spend time in God's presence.

And if I don't spend time in God's presence, which Jesus opened up for me, which
I have an opportunity to do now, then hope is going to begin to go missing in my
life. Your life can be so filled with activities, with things to do, that you
begin to lose hope because you miss God's presence. Now, I don't want to make
you think that in order to enjoy God's presence, you have to move somewhere or
take a two-week vacation somewhere, go to the top of a mountain somewhere.

That can be good to do sometimes, but I want to remind you, you can enjoy God's
presence right now, right where you are, listening to this. You can enjoy God's
presence in the midst of everyday life, everyday activities, everyday decisions,
everyday relationships, talking to Him in that moment, saying, "Lord, I know
You're here with me right now. " The two-word prayer, "You are here, You are
here," can do a lot to help you experience God's presence in the everyday-ness
of life.

I think one of the reasons we don't experience God's presence is because we wait
for those times when we can get away to experience God's presence, and I want to
invite you, experience His presence. You're here. Experience His presence in
your life today.

Our fathers, we pray together. You are here. You're here.

And Jesus has opened the curtain. He has brought us with Him into this place,
and we can boldly come into Your presence. We can, whatever business meeting
we're in today, wherever we're taking our kids today, whatever date we might
have today, whatever schoolwork we're doing today, in that moment in just a
simple, simple prayer, we can recognize You're here.

You're here with us. Your presence is here with us. Lord, I pray for myself, I
pray for each of us that this week, if we continue to walk through it, we would
experience Your presence, and in the experience of Your presence, we would
experience what is there, faith and love and hope.

In Your presence are all those delights, are all those joys, are all those
treasures. They're in Your presence. So Lord, help us to take the time sometimes
to get away to experience You, but also help us today, right now, where we are,
in this moment right here, to experience You.

You're here. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Next week, you might have noticed he
ended this chapter by talking about Melchizedek.

Next week, he's going to really go into who this guy is. We're going to focus on
what we can learn about how Jesus works in our lives today through this, the
lessons in this somewhat mysterious figure from the Old Testament. So don't miss
next week.

It's going to be Melchizedek week in the book of Hebrews.