Our Assurance & God’s Truthfulness

Sermon Transcript

It’s not just Awana that’s going to need some new volunteers. This building is really expanding a lot of our ministries and the size of our ministries we anticipate for the fall. So what we’re going to do is, and I would encourage you to start right now just by praying as to how God might have you involved even in greeting or working in one of our programs, what’s great about having two back-to-back services is that you can serve in the children’s ministry in one, or the youth program, and then go to church in the next service here.

So what we’re going to do is we’re going to set up some tables next week in the back and around the sides of the auditorium, and you can meet a ministry leader, and if you want to get plugged into something here at Compass Bible Church, you’ll get all that information next week. But this week, if you would remember, as you pray for your church, pray how God might be changing, deepening, or adjusting your ministry here. And if you’re not plugged in, we’d really love to see you plugged in. That is, if Greg doesn’t get everyone to sign up for Awana.

As many of you know, I got back recently from a vacation, a classic road trip. And we put thousands of miles on our family van. We saw a lot of the Southwest interstates. We saw lots of, wow, small towns, more rest stops than I’d prefer to stop at. We saw all kinds of things on our long trip. And it was one, I tell people, “How was your…?” I say, “It was a classic road trip,” which means it was a challenge. There’s a lot going on.

But the more I caught myself saying that to people, I recognized that there were a lot of things about my road trip that weren’t so classic. Because really, I had a few modern amenities that changed the feel and the flavor of our road trip. Now, there are things, of course, that make it a lot more enjoyable for the kids than when we were kids, right? They’ve got their little videos going and all their stuff and games and little electronics. They’re fine.

But what’s great for Dad on the modern road trip, as opposed to the classic, the true classic road trip, is that I had a few things that made this trip a whole lot more comfortable, let’s say. There are three things, to be specific, that really changed the whole mindset of this trip for Dad, the captain of the van. Commander, I might add, of the van. Three things. Specifically, a cell phone— isn’t that wonderful, to travel with communication; a GPS—if you don’t have one, forget the other amenities on your car. If you’re going to take a road trip, that is indispensable; and thirdly, because of kind of the nomadic nature of the church lately, I’ve gotten mobile and remote Internet access on my laptop. So I can be sitting almost anywhere and get access to the Internet.

Now, early on in my attempts at family road trips, I didn’t have any of those things. Certainly when we were kids, we had none of that. But without them, you find that it’s a whole different experience, because I have, as I’m sure you have, as your wife is working through the un-refoldable map and not having a phone and having no access to anything, there are moments of insecurity on the long road trip, going into towns and small places you’ve never been, or big cities you’ve never driven through. I’ve been lost several times, all the things that you have. Sometimes it’s a nightmare, and you feel very alone in the middle of a new and foreign place.

Well, it’s great to have the cell phone. Number one, I could make phone calls on the fly. The laptop was great. The GPS was great. The laptop—let’s start with that. There were times on my road trip where I could sit and actually make hotel reservations for our next stop on the laptop. It’s tremendous. And then I can call and actually find out that I’m actually speaking to the people who have a reservation for me, and I can confirm the address. And then the wonderful thing, on that dashboard, I can plug in that address. It’ll tell me exactly where I am. That screen will tell me how far I have to go and how long it’ll take. Minus my son’s bathroom stops, I can pretty much determine where I am, where I’m going, and I can confirm that I’ve got reservations when I get there.

Now, if you talk to my wife, early on, as I was a novice in these cross-country trips, it was a nightmare. But this last one, I’m assuming—she didn’t grade me—but I’m thinking I did a lot better on this trip than I’ve ever done because we had a sense of security. We had a sense of assurance. There was going to be a bed, you know, for us to sleep in that night. And we didn’t have one mishap as it related to that.

Thankfully, in Scripture, as it relates to our traversing the desert of the Christian life—and there are many times, as you know, there’s lots of cacti and high temperatures along the way—God has given us a few things that are for the same exact purpose that my GPS and cell phone are for. It is for giving us a sense of assurance along the way. God is into that more so than we may think. And the only reasons we travel through the difficulties of life and don’t feel that is because we don’t utilize the tools that God has given us.

He wants us to know exactly where we’re at. He’d like us to know where we’re going. He wants us to make sure that we have reservations when we get there. He wants us to have a sense of inner peace about these things. The Bible is full of that kind of information and saying, if you’d avail yourself to the tools of the New Testament, we don’t have to go through life uncertain, unsure, or full of doubting.

If you have your Bibles, I want you to open one more time to Hebrews chapter 6, which is one of the most helpful chapters in giving us tools to make sure that we live the Christian life with confidence. Now, you may not think that that’s a godly virtue. I wrote about that in an article for you not too long ago, but I’m telling you there are few things in Scripture more prominent than this: that if you are a person who loves God and knows God well, you will be a person of confidence. You will have in your life—even the Scripture puts it this way—you will have a certain kind of boldness.

Now, it’s not a boldness or a confidence in ourselves. You realize that. And Jesus was often, you know, going after the Pharisees who were confident in themselves. But godliness is the kind of thing that gives us a confidence in not only where we’re at on this journey, but where we’re going, whose we are, and the fact that we are secure in a relationship with God. And it’s unfortunate that in our world, it seems like a lot like the first-century world, a lot of people don’t know where they stand in that regard. Most of your religious friends, I would assume, talk about their relationship with God with their fingers crossed. You talk about heaven with a sense of, “I hope so, and I’m hoping that I make it.”

Well, the Scripture wants us to be sure, and much of the Scripture was written for us to utilize the tools of the New Testament so that we can know where we’re at, who we’re owned by, where we’re going, and be confident about the reservations when we get there. Proverbs 28 is a great text, as I think about the virtue of boldness. It talks about the fact that the righteous should be as bold as a lion. They’re confident. They’re sure. That Hebrew word is “to hope,” to have resilient faith. They know who they are. They act boldly because they know their relationship with God is what it’s supposed to be. And they’re confident about the end of the path for them.

Hebrews chapter 6 has been helping us think through these issues. As a matter of fact, if you look back up at verse number 4 and glance your eyes down through verse 12, you’ll remember we took, I think, four weeks to work through each section of this text, and we learned a lot about the reality of distinguishing the real Christian life versus a Christian life that’s not a real Christian life. It’s just the façade of a Christian life. It’s the life of a churchgoer. And we said, we want to make sure that we’re genuinely converted. And so we looked at the clues in this text, and we did, I hope, some thoughtful introspection. Am I genuinely a Christian, or am I like a lot of people who just grow up in this thing and I would be a Muslim if my parents were Muslim, or I’d be, you know, a Hindu if my parents were Hindu, and I’m a Christian because my parents are Christians and that’s just what I am?

Or have we thoughtfully and carefully chosen, as God’s grace enables us, to follow Jesus Christ? And are we sure of that? And does our life bear evidence to that? And the illustrations and the discussions in this text, if you look at verse number 9 again, he says, “You know what, I’m confident of better things in your case, things that accompany salvation.” And we tried to understand what those are in the comparisons that were there in that text for us.

Well, there’s more to assurance than just looking at our lives. We have to be confident that this One that we’re dealing with is dealing with us truthfully, and that the things that he said we can count on and bank on. It’s not just about a changed life. If we’re going to be sure that we are God’s, we need to make sure that his promises are sure. And that’s exactly what he does then in the rest of this chapter.

Take a look at verses 13 through 20. Let’s read these together. We’re going to get the big picture today, and then we’re going to look at each section of this for the next three weeks. But verse number 13 reads this way. Take a look at it:

“When God made his promise to Abraham…” Now, there’s an obvious break there, and most of your translations have some kind of paragraph change, some kind of heading there. But all of this is for the purpose of assurance, which is the topic of the chapter. And he starts talking about God making promises, specifically, by way of example, to Abraham. And he says this:

“Since there was no one greater for him”—that is God—“to swear by, God swore by himself.” Bizarre. He said, “I will surely bless you and give you many descendants.” That’s a quotation from Genesis 22. We’ll get into that next week.

Verse 15: “And so after waiting patiently”—that’s Abraham—“he received what was promised. Now, men swear by someone greater than themselves, and an oath confirms what is said, and it puts an end to people’s arguments.”

Great. Verse 17: “Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised”—see, and that’s not just Abraham and his descendants, that’s us too—“he confirmed it with an oath. God did that so that by two unchangeable things…” What are those things? Look up at verse 17. It’s that he made a promise and he confirmed it with an oath. “By two unchangeable things in which both of those, you’ve got to think, it’s impossible for God to lie…”

Here’s the key. Here’s the kicker. Here’s the point of this section: “We who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged.” That’s where God wants us to be. It’s like sitting in that van with that GPS and a cell phone confirming our reservations. And we’ve got the computer, and it says right there, “Confirmation number,” and we know. We’re greatly encouraged.

“We have this hope,” verse 19, “as an anchor for the soul.” Isn’t that good terminology? I’d like to live with that. “I’m confident”—look at these words—“firm and secure.” That kind of hope, “it enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain…” Now he’s looking, previewing, to a discussion about the tabernacle and the temple. That’s future in the next few chapters. “…where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf, and he has become a high priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.” And if that sounds familiar, that’s because that guy’s name came up in chapter 5, remember, way back when? He’s going to get back to that—that’s next chapter.

Here he is saying, “Wouldn’t it be great to live here?” Now, I want you to underline those words. Highlight them if you brought your highlighter. Do something. Mark up your Bibles, okay? That section in the middle is where God wants us to live. Look at it again. Verse 18, second half: “We who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged. We have a hope; it’s like an anchor for our soul. It’s firm and secure.” That would be a good place to live. That would be a good description of Proverbs 28:1, to live as a bold and confident person, because inside, I’m sure. I’m confident. I’m confident about who I am, whose I am, where I’m going, my reservations—I’m sure. That’d be a great place to live.

Number one on your outline, let’s just jot this down. If you haven’t found that yet, it’s in your worship packet. Pull that out, and let’s write this down. This is an acknowledgement of a desire of God. Number one, let’s write it down:

God wants you to be sure you are his.

God wants you to be sure that you’re his. Now, there’s a lot of religious people in this world that don’t get that statement. They don’t understand that it is God’s desire that they are confident about where they stand with God. Now you may think, “Well, that’s a bizarre statement to make, Mike, because the first half of this chapter knocked me off the stool and made me think maybe I’m not a Christian.” Right? I mean, that’s where we were left. We did a lot of introspection. We said, just because you go to church, just because you’ve had some goosebumps in church, doesn’t mean you’re a Christian. Don’t talk to me about walking an aisle and all this stuff, unless it was a genuine conversion. And we started talking about how that’s different. And you can have a lot of artificial kinds of experiences that aren’t real.

So it made us question. I think a lot of the people in the last series, in the first half of chapter 6, thought, “Wow, that makes me live right on the edge of wondering if I’m saved or not.” Well, the second half of this chapter is, we want you to be sure. And we kind of ended with that resonant note in the last installment of the four-part series on the first half. God does want us to be sure. He wants us to be confident. He wants us to live with a kind of anchor in our soul—firm and secure. God wants you to be sure that you’re his.

The logic of verses 13 through 20 is, that’s why God has made us some promises. Now, we have to figure out this life part and the genuineness of our experience. But when it comes to the promises of God and the equation of the gospel, he wants us to be confident and absolutely sure. Because when we’re sure, because our God makes promises—which, by the way, is completely unnecessary, right? Even in the New Testament, doesn’t the New Testament say that you and I shouldn’t be swearing, right? You were taught that. You grew up in Sunday school. “I’m not supposed to swear.” You don’t say, “Mom, I cleaned my room, I swear.” If I said that to my mom—no, you don’t say that. We don’t swear. We’re Christians.

Here’s a text about God swearing. It’s completely unnecessary. Why is it unnecessary for Christians to swear and say, “I swear”? Because if we say something, it should be true. If that’s true of us as virtuous New Testament Christians, or at least it should be, do you think God needs to swear? No, he doesn’t need to swear. He doesn’t need to take an oath. He doesn’t need to even make promises. If God says it, that ought to be good enough. And yet God goes the extra mile and says, “I’m going to do some things that seem completely unnecessary and way out of bounds, but I’m going to do them so that you never doubt the equation and the transaction of the gospel. You’ve got to know this, and you’ve got to know it for sure.”

As a matter of fact, before we even look at that, keep your finger here and turn with me to Romans chapter 8. What a great passage to help us recognize that when we are sure, man, we can handle anything. It’s the person that is confident in their heart about their relationship with God—and there’s no doubting there—who can just blow right through anything. When their doctor says “cancer,” man, they plow through it. Doesn’t matter. When the bad news about a financial situation, or their home, or their relationships, or their children— they can manage. They’re like a rock. You meet people like that? They’re just a rock. How do they do that?

Well, they have a confidence in God. It’s a kind of confidence that the Apostle Paul had. He’s getting whipped and beaten and thrown in jail all the time, and yet he’s found, like in some interesting places in dungeons in Philippi, singing Christian songs, hymns about Christ, because he’s confident. He’s got an anchor in his soul.

He writes these words in Romans chapter 8. Are you there? Look down to verse 18, Romans 8:18. He is so confident about his future and where he’s going, he says this: “I consider that our present sufferings”—and Paul had a lot of them. He would itemize some in the bottom of this chapter, which we don’t get to, but, man, a lot of sufferings—“they’re not even worthy to be compared with the glory that’s to be revealed in us.” Listen how sure he is about that.

And then he starts talking about the world. Verse 19: “The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.” He’s looking at the world, saying, “The world can’t wait. The trees, the forest, the mountain, they can’t wait until I am brought into the kingdom of God, until I’m revealed as a child of God in the kingdom after the judgment. Man, that’ll be a good thing.” That’s the way he views the world.

He says the creation itself was “subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it in hope”—put in the margin Genesis 3, it’s called the curse: thorns, thistles, all the bad stuff in the world, natural disasters—creation, it says, I’m sorry, “in hope that creation itself,” verse 21, “will one day be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” He’s saying the whole world can’t wait for me to be brought into the kingdom and to be revealed as the Son of God at the coming of Christ, because the whole world’s going to be made right then.

He says this, verse 22: “We know the whole creation’s been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time,” poetically stated. Verse 23: “Not only so, we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit”—I’m a real Christian now—“we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons. We can’t wait—for the redemption of our bodies.” That would be good. “For in this hope we were saved.”

By the way, Christian hope is not cross-your-fingers, right? It’s not “I hope so.” It is a confidence and eager anticipation. Verse 24: “In this hope we’ve been saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.” That’s an understatement. We wait for it eagerly. We groan within, and we can’t wait for the reality of it. And that, back up to verse 18, can help us plow through any present struggle with confidence and assurance and hope.

But you’ve got to be sure. You’ve got to be confident. There can be no equivocating or doubting. The mind of the Apostle Paul is so anchored in the reality that he is going to be ushered into the presence of Christ and brought there to live for eternity, with all things made right, crooked paths made straight, rough places made plain. And he’s so confident about that, that he can sit here and say, “Hey, you know what? Throw me in jail. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. I know where I’m going.” That’s Christian hope.

And he bases this on the reality of what is expected of the normal Christian life. You and I ought to live that way too. Why? Because God is a God who makes unnecessary promises to us just to say, “They’re there now, guys. Just know I’m not kidding. I’m telling you the truth. I make these promises. They’re real promises, and you need to bank your life on it. You need to have this kind of commitment.”

My wife likes golf. I’ve told you that a million times. And what’s bizarre, especially for Sunday afternoon church, what really makes it rough for me is that she always tapes the Sunday—if you golfers know, that’s the last day of the weekend tournament, right? Which now it seems like is 52 weekends a year, which I think it might be. Golf—I’m up to here with golf. Golf, golf, golf. My wife tapes it so that when we come home from church, she can watch the end of the golf match.

Now, here’s the problem. In my car on the way home from church on Sunday nights, I listen to the news, and I usually hear who wins the tournament. My wife doesn’t hear that. So we get home, we crack open the SpaghettiOs can, or at least the Cheez-Its and the Pepsi—you know how my diet works—and we sit down, and Carlin can’t wait to turn on the recording of the afternoon’s golf match.

Now, she’s in suspense, right? When they’re making their putts, it’s like, “Oh!” And I’m going, “Whatever,” right? Why? Because I know who wins. And she’s cheering for her favorite player, and I’m going, “Okay, well, he’s not going to make it.” The winners get up there, and I’m just—there’s just total confidence. How does that work? Well, it works because I’ve seen it. I know it. I’ve heard a reliable source who witnessed it. It’s all over the radio on the way home from church. I know it for sure.

The Bible says that when we think about the future, we’ve got to recognize this: we’ve got a God who’s already seen it happen. And when he’s giving us this, he’s giving us a play-by-play of what, in his book, is already in the can. It’s done. It’s finished. It’s been recorded, and it’s history to him.

Here’s how he says it in Scripture. Now, notice if these aren’t familiar words. He starts the last book of the Bible, which is the biggest prophetic look into the future—he starts it in chapter 1 with these words: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.” That’s how he starts it. What’s he saying? “I’ve seen the end. I know who wins. I know how it goes. I know which putts fall and which putts don’t.”

Do you know how the last chapter ends? Same words. “I am the Alpha, the Omega, the beginning and the end, who was, who is, and who is to come.” And he says this about our world: he says that ultimately one day Christ will return. He will take his children who trust in him into a new kingdom, and he will live with us there, making all the wrong things right.

And if you sit there and listen to the news—did you watch the news today where this Southern California American convert to Islam is threatening Christians? Did you hear that? “Convert to Christianity now or pay the consequences.” You don’t have to sit there and go, “Wow, man, maybe I’m wrong.”

If we understand this book, and we’ll get into why we should, and if God has really told us the future in advance, and we know if you repent of your sins, put your trust in Christ, see evidence of it in your life, then you are his child. And no matter what happens in this world, I know we win in the end. And I know that we will walk into the eternal kingdom, and every problem we’ve had on this earth will be made to look very small in comparison to the victory that’s about to be revealed to us.

That’s living with confidence and hope. It’s not biting our fingernails when we read the newspaper or watch the news, or when we get the reports about the bad things going on, or the trials, or the struggles, or the issues of our lives. It doesn’t matter. We know who we are. We know where we are. We know where we’re going, and we know that our reservations are intact.

Now, the problem is a lot of people trying to live the Christian life without all that stuff, because they don’t have it anchored in. They don’t have their minds and their lives anchored in the confidence that God is telling us the truth. That’s what the second half of Hebrews chapter 6 is all about.

Matter of fact, we’ve got to step back, and I just want to quickly put these two things together, if I could, in point number two. Jot this down. What we need to do in understanding the second half of Hebrews 6 is understand the first half in juxtaposition or comparison to the second half. Let’s jot it down this way:

We need to understand the components of assurance.

And I’ve already painted the picture for you, but let’s write it down. The components of assurance. If we’re going to be confident, we’ve got to know the components. The two components are: first half of Hebrews—my life. Got that? My life. The second half of Hebrews is—God’s promise. Okay.

Now, there are questions to ask in both of these. And I trust we’ve already asked these first two questions, but we dealt with them in the first half. Let’s just logically think it through. If the first half is my life, I should be asking these kinds of questions.

Question number one needs to be: Have I rightly responded to the gospel? That’s question number one. Settle that question. Figure it out. You’ve got to know what the gospel is. You’ve got to know what the gospel requires. You’ve got to know that there was a time in your life where you’ve actually responded according to the prescription of the Bible—not a gospel tract, not a song, not a hymn, not a sermon—but what does the Bible say? Have I rightly responded to the gospel?

Secondly, this is what a big chunk of the first half of Hebrews 6 was all about: I need to ask the question, Does my life show continuing evidence? Does my life show continuing evidence of that conversion? And that was a big part—continuing. Do I see that this was not a flash in the pan, it was some kind of immediate adherence to Christ, and now it’s waned and it goes away? Do I see my life moving from one level of Christlikeness to the next? Have I conquered sin this year that I couldn’t conquer last year? Am I more involved in thinking like Christ now than I was ten years ago? Are you seeing continual growth in your life?

Okay. Are there bumps along the way? Yes. Do you sin? Absolutely. Welcome to the club. But are you continually showing evidence of your relationship with Christ? Does that sound familiar? 1 John 3, which is a real parallel to Hebrews 6, lists all these things about checking that, looking for fruit in our lives. And he sums it up this way: he says you’ve got to be able to demonstrate this love for God and others—not with words, not with just our tongues flapping, he says, but in deed and in truth. Do you see that in your life?

If you do, here’s the next verse in 1 John 3. He says, then we can set our hearts at rest in God’s presence. Because we know that the proof of our Christianity—not just looking at, “I think I responded rightly to the gospel,” but there’s evidence in my life—that I can sit back and say, “You know what? As it relates to the question of my life, I can check it off the list, because I am confident that my heart is at rest before God, because I see continuing evidence of my conversion.” Not an external pressure to be like the other churchgoers, but an internal change that is moving me to be more like Christ.

Is that old stuff? That’s a repeat? Sorry, that’s the old sermon series.

Okay, second half—the promise. There are two components to this, just like there’s two components to the first part of this chapter. There are two components to asking questions about the promise.

The first question is this: Did Jesus really secure my salvation? Did Jesus really secure my salvation? Because a guy with a beard on Fox News today is telling me Jesus really didn’t do it. I’ve got to answer that question. To him, Jesus was just a talking head for God, didn’t die on a cross for my sins, wasn’t resurrected from the dead. So he’s saying, “You Christians are trusting in the wrong thing.” I’ve got to solve that question. Did he really do that? Is he who he said he was?

As a matter of fact, let’s just look at the big claims one more time. I know this is Sunday school, you know, at least 201, but let’s go back to John chapter 11. John chapter 11. In John chapter 11, here’s the kind of thing Jesus busted on the scene and said. Now, again, we’ve got to debate this. If Christ is not who he claims to be, then you know what? I’ve got no assurance of salvation. Because here’s the kind of big claims he’s making.

You know the context. Skim your eyes through this chapter. Lazarus dies. His sisters are crying. “I wish you would have got here sooner, Jesus. It would have been great. I know you could have saved him.” Remember this text? Jesus says this—punchline, verse 25: “Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. All who believe in me will live, even though he dies.’” Okay, it’s a big statement.

Here’s what the threat on Fox News was today by this Southern California convert to Islam. Am I saying all this and you didn’t see it? Some of you saw it, right? Go home and watch the news; you’ll see it tonight. Or go on the Internet and listen to this guy rant against your Christianity. And “Muslims,” they say, “are going to take over the world. And all you Christians need to leave the darkness of your deception,” he says, “and walk into the light of Islam. And if you don’t,” he’s threatening you, “you will be punished, not only in this life,” he says, “in the next.”

So we’ve got to make sure that if Jesus said this, is he telling us the truth? Because the Scripture says, no, no, no—if I die and I’m trusting in Jesus, I get to live after I die. You say I’m going to hell. Jesus said I’m going to live, because he is the resurrection and the life.

Verse 26: “And whoever lives and believes in me after that”—look at this—“will never die.” Never die. And then he asked the pertinent question: “Do you believe this?” Now, she didn’t catch the question. She gives him the wrong answer about a future resurrection. But the question here is: Are you sure that I’m truthful in this claim? Am I lying, or am I telling the truth? Do you believe it?

A few chapters later—turn to John chapter 14. Even if we check that box, “Okay, I’ve done enough research, I’ve done enough homework, I’ve looked at the Scripture objectively; I think Jesus is telling the truth”—the second question you’ve got to answer is whether he’s going too far with this claim. You remember this discussion with the doubters and the disciples sitting around the beginning of the Upper Room Discourse, just before we get to that? Look at verse 5. Look at verse 6; here’s the real punchline. John 14:6. Memory verse from Awana. Ready?

“I am the way and the truth and the life.” And, by the way, here’s the thing: “No one comes to the Father except through me.” Okay? Because that’s the second cop-out of the modern culture. Just like they were saying to the first-century Hebrew culture. They were saying, “Stop with the Jesus kick.” And then they said, “Even if he’s right, you’re not saying we’re wrong, are you?” This text says, if you’re not clinging to Jesus when you die, you don’t get it. And no one does unless they go through Christ. That’s what the text says.

We’ve got to answer the question: Is that promise true? Is Jesus telling us the truth? Did he really secure our salvation for us, and is he who he says he is? That’s the promise that’s under scrutiny. We’ve got to figure that one out.

Second half: there’s another component question to this examination of the promise of God.

Question number two: Will God keep his promise to save me? I can think that Jesus is telling me the truth. But ultimately, Jesus in Scripture is seen as my advocate. He is seen as the one who stands and pleads my case before the Father on Judgment Day. He is my intercessor. The real issue is God. Is God, the Creator of heaven and earth, the one who designed me, is he going to say, “Okay, it’s cool. I accept you on the basis of Christ”? That’s the promise in Scripture. Is it true?

Here’s the claim. Romans chapter 8—I quoted it. Did we turn there earlier? Sounds so familiar. Romans chapter 8. Let’s turn back there. Romans chapter 8. The pages are still warm. Romans chapter 8.

In one simple statement, here’s the promise of God. We’ve got to determine whether it’s true or not. Will God keep his promise to save me? Look at verse 30. Here’s the links in the chain that we’ve got to see—is this true?

Verse 30: “Those he,” God, “predestined, he also called.” If before the creation of the world he chose us, then he calls us in real time on the planet. “And those he called, guess what he does? He justifies them.” That means he forgives their sin. And that’s the state we’re living in now. The question is, what about the justified? Maybe God’s not going to keep his promise. Here’s the promise of God: “Those he justified, he glorified.”

See, we really are banking on a couple things here. I’m banking on the fact, if I’m going to live confidently, not only have I seen that I’ve kept the prescription of the gospel—I’ve repented of my sins, put my trust in him—and not only do I see evidence of that in my life, I’m not the guy I used to be, I’m being more like this ancient prophet from the Bible, but I’m banking on this fact that what Jesus said is true, and God’s going to keep his promise. If I don’t have that part—take that component out—if in my mind at night as I lay in bed and stare at the ceiling, thinking of the world and all the conflicting religions, if I’m thinking, “Wow, I wonder if this is true. I wonder if Christ really did this. I wonder if he’s telling us. I wonder if all that stuff is real. I wonder if God really is going to embrace me”—you’ve got to solve that.

If we solve the first one, you’ve got to solve the second one. You solve both parts—the question of your life and the question of God’s promise or his truthfulness—you will be confident. You will have an anchor in your soul that is firm and secure. That’s why the discussion of God’s faithfulness, God’s truthfulness, and God’s promises in Hebrews chapter 6:13–20 is so critical.

And you say, “Well, my life is the real iffy part.” And I know that. That’s why we spent so much time and effort on that. If you’re going to have doubts about your Christian life, may it be because you’re really rethinking what you did and what you are—the evidence. Don’t let it be because we’re doubting God’s truthfulness. Because God has given us enough tools in the Bible to figure those things out. We’ve got it. We’ve got to be firm on that.

Jot this down—we don’t have time to look at it—but 2 Peter chapter 3. Great discussion about mockers who come, much like they did in the first century, saying, “Oh yeah, your Jesus, if that’s all true, where is he? Is he going to come back tomorrow? Yeah. You read your silly books about ‘Left Behind’ and all that. I don’t feel very left behind.” Oh, okay. Great. Great.

The Bible says in the last days scoffers will come. They’ll mock, saying, “Where is the coming of Christ? He promised that. I don’t see it.” Do you know what the writer of 2 Peter, the apostle, says? He says, “Boy, you better look back. Don’t forget the history. Don’t forget what he did in the past. Don’t forget his record of keeping promises.” Man, God’s going to—don’t think he’s slow, as some count slowness. Remember this text? Sounding familiar now?

God’s not slow. To God it’s no big deal. If he makes a promise a thousand years ago, it’s like he made it yesterday. It’s no big deal. If he made it yesterday, a thousand years, it doesn’t matter. God is above time. He’s the Alpha and the Omega. And if he promised it, you can be sure he’s going to carry through on it. He says the only reason he’s waiting is he wants more people, like this guy on TV today, to come to the place of repentance. And I’d turn it right around: repent. Repent from your darkness and walk into the light of Christ. That’s what you need to do.

The Bible says that’s the only reason God’s waiting. But one day the waiting will be over. He will wrap this thing up, and we’ll walk into the presence of Christ. But we’ve got to be sure. Got to be sure about my life. Got to be sure about God’s promise.

So what do we do? Quick preview. Point three is a preview of where we’re going in the next three weeks. We won’t put too many of the cards down, but we’ll let you know. Here are the basic things we’ve got to do. Number three—number three on your outline. Verses 13 through 20 are all about this:

Building your confidence in God’s truthfulness.

That’s what it’s about. And that’s our goal: build your confidence in God’s truthfulness. And the first thing I’d say that you need to do is come for the next three weeks. Okay, that would be good. If you come for the next three weeks, we’re going to talk about God’s truthfulness. We’re going to look at his track record. We’re going to look at his character. We’re going to look at Christ and what he’s done. We’re going to see from a biblical standpoint, as best we can in an hour on Sunday afternoons, how this thing holds together. So come back.

But if you are going to find out whether or not God is truthful, whether his promises hold, the only way you can do that is to interface with the record. That’s the only way you can do that. You’ve got to interface with the record of what he said and what he’s done. That’s what you’ve got to do.

So I’m going to give you three things to look for as you do that. In other words, yeah, come to church, great. But you’d better get one of these. It’s called the Bible. Seen one before? And you should spend some time in this thing. Because we’ve got to determine whether or not God is trustworthy. Is he true? If I’m going to find out about him keeping a future promise—the whole gospel equation—I’ve got to do some work. This is the record of God’s dealings with mankind, and a book filled with his promises.

One of the books on the back I suggested for you is Lockyer’s book. And he writes all these books, “All the [blanks] of Scripture.” He wrote one called All the Promises of Scripture. Cataloging it, they say—and I haven’t done the count myself, I’ve done a lot of counts in Scripture but not this one—that there are 7,847 promises in the Bible. Great, great. The point is, God has written a book full of promises, and they’re great to study.

But the questions that we’re dealing with are: the promise of Christ—is it trustworthy? The promise of God in salvation—is it trustworthy? We’ve got to figure that out. One way we can figure that one out is by looking at the totality of them. A couple things—A, B, C. Ready for that?

Look at verses 13 through 15 in your text. Verses 13 through 15. Thirteen through fifteen is a discussion about a guy named Abraham. See the logic? Anytime you’re going to figure out whether I’m banking on the right promise or not, I’ve got to look at the history of promises. And what he’s doing with one simple example, I’m going to try to suggest, is what you do throughout the Scripture. It’s great for us to be reading through the Bible.

As you read through the Bible, I want you to look for this—letter A: I want you to look for God’s track record. Ponder God’s track record. And what’s great about the Scripture is we get a running history from about 1445 B.C. through about 90 A.D. We’ve got a lot of time—forty authors, three continents, three languages, this whole sixty-six-book library of God’s dealings with people. And what we can do is we can start to look through these and watch God and how he operates. We can watch him make promises in the early books of the Bible and fulfill them in the later books of the Bible. We can start to look for his track record.

We can see the promises that he makes. Here’s an example—and I know this one’s codified in one set of books, the Pentateuch—but turn with me to Joshua 21 for a minute. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua. Sixth book of the Old Testament.

Now, Joshua—it really isn’t codified in the Pentateuch, because the Pentateuch, written first by Moses, here’s a book chronicled by Joshua and about his life. We see the promises in the Pentateuch. We see the answers in the next book that follows the Pentateuch, the book of Joshua. Joshua chapter 21.

The book of Joshua, as you remember from our survey classes, is a book that chronicles the capturing of the Promised Land. They come into Canaan, and they capture the land. The Pentateuch sets us up for that. Genesis through Deuteronomy show us how that’s all set up for. Then in the book of Joshua, we get God’s record of how it takes place.

Look at verse 43. This is the end of the book, almost to the end. Joshua 21: “So Yahweh gave Israel all the land that he had sworn to give their forefathers.” He started with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph—you know the story. All the patriarchs were promised this land. And Joshua is the historical record of them taking possession of the land. “They took possession of it and they settled there.”

Verse 44: “Yahweh gave them rest on every side, just as he had sworn”—not that he had to, but he put his hand up, so to speak, and he gave these people oaths—“he swore it to their forefathers. Not one of their enemies withstood them. Yahweh handed all their enemies over to them.” Underline this verse: “Not one of all Yahweh’s good promises to the house of Israel failed; every one of them was fulfilled.”

Okay, what you can see, in just one example, are the promises about the occupation of Canaan. Great. Now the history of what happens in Canaan. And then you see these periodic statements: God did everything he promised he would do.

Go forward. Go forward about 500 years in Israel’s history to 1 Kings chapter 8. 1 Kings chapter 8. Another passage of Scripture. Turn to one more passage of Scripture with me. We’ve gone from an 80% participation to a 72%. Let’s go back up to 80, 85. Next week, those of you who didn’t bring your Bibles, you’ll bring them. And we’re going to get some Bibles, actually. Churches tend to buy those from time to time, and we’re actually going to have some here. But in the meantime, get one. Buy one, steal one, do what you’ve got to do. We’ll give you one—come next door, we’ll give you a Bible.

1 Kings 8. Look at verse 54. 1 Kings 8:54. Solomon now built a temple. Now we’ve got a lot of history from Moses’ writing of the Pentateuch through the capturing of Canaan, through the judges and the early prophetic period. Now we have the monarchy. Now we have the third king of Israel, Solomon, and he builds a worship center. Well, that was promised, predicted, and all of that was foretold, and God looked forward to that.

Look what Solomon says. He finishes building this thing. Look at verse 54, 1 Kings 8:54: “When Solomon had finished all these prayers and supplications to Yahweh, he rose from before the altar of Yahweh, where he had been kneeling with his hands spread out toward heaven. He stood and blessed the whole assembly of Israel in a loud voice, saying: ‘Praise be to Yahweh, who has given rest to his people Israel just as he promised. Not one word has failed of all the good promises that he gave us through his servant Moses.’”

Another installment of God keeping his promises. All you’ve got to do is read through the Bible with us, and as you do, start to keep track of the times that God makes a promise early in Scripture and how he fulfills it, both good promises and “bad” promises. And no matter where you’re reading—back to Hebrews chapter 6. Those are two examples. We could do a lot. I’m just trying to give you examples.

Whether it’s the building of the temple, the occupation of Canaan—whatever it is. Whether it’s the Babylonian exile, whether it’s the rebuilding of the temple through Ezra, or the walls by Nehemiah, whether it’s the coming of John the Baptist, whatever it is, look for the promises and look for the fulfillments. Which, by the way, you won’t find in other “holy books,” including the Qur’an. You won’t find it. The Bible’s full of promises, predictive promises, and God coming through and fulfilling those.

Secondly, look at verses 16 through 18 of our text. We’ll get into this in detail two weeks from now. Hebrews chapter 6, verses 16 through 18. We just got through a historic example of Abraham—we’ll look at that next week—how God fulfilled his promises to Abraham when they were very unlikely. But now he starts talking about God making promises.

“Men swear by someone greater than themselves.” Who do you swear by if you’re God? You’ve got no one to swear by, so you swear by yourself. You say, “Oh, by God, I swear.” And so, verse 17, God tries to make this very clear to us. He’s trying to confirm it with an oath. God is trying to show us that he’s truthful.

Here’s the thing: God only tries to show us that he’s truthful by making promises and covenants in the Bible, which, by the way, are everywhere. You carry a Bible that’s broken into two parts. You call it the Old and New what? Testament. Means what? Covenant. What is covenant? It’s a promise. This is a book of promises. It’s not only trying to tell us he’s truthful by the promises, but in everything that the Bible says, he is trying to show us something about his nature.

So, letter B: when you read the Bible, not only come to church and listen to sermons about it, but when you read the Bible, here’s what I want you to do: try to detect God’s character. In everything. In the Law, in the giving of the Levitical sacrificial system, in the prophetic period, in the destruction of Jerusalem, in the captivity in Babylon, in the intertestamental period and what’s going on—and God has predicted that period of 400 years would be—in the New Testament, in the teachings of Paul, in the growth of the church in the book of Acts. Try to look in every text and ask questions like this:

What does this tell me about the character of God? What does this teach me about God’s attributes? What do I learn about God’s values? What do I see about God’s attitude in this text?

And as you do, you’ll start to gather the composite of all of God’s teachings, and you’ll be able to say with Numbers 23:19— that’s a good passage to jot down, don’t need to turn there—Numbers 23:19, where Balak of all people—remember that story of Balaam and Balak and all that?—here’s Balaam talking to Balak. Here’s the conclusion they say after all that they had seen and all God’s dealings with Israel: “God is not a man that he should lie, or the son of man that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and then not fulfill?”

You can tell a lot about the truthfulness of a statement by watching a person’s life and learning about how they act. And then you can say, “I’ve got a take on how much confidence I should put in his words, his statements, his oaths, his promises.”

Try and detect God’s character in every passage of Scripture, and I think you’ll stand back and say, “This God doesn’t just talk. This God acts. And if he talks and he says something, he’s going to do it.” You will build your confidence in God’s truthfulness just by reading Scripture, studying the Bible, and trying to detect God’s character.

Lastly, turn to Romans chapter 1. Actually, no, don’t do that. Look at Hebrews chapter 6. Or, if you can do both, that would be good. Look at Hebrews 6 and turn to Romans 1. Can you do that? You can, because it’s printed on your worksheet. I just realized that. So as you’re turning to Romans 1, glance over there and look at the printed sheet and see what’s going on in the last section that we’ll deal with three weeks from now.

In Hebrews chapter 6, verses—what did we say?—19 and 20, the last two verses, we talk about entering behind a curtain— who? Jesus, verse 20, who goes before us, who’s become a high priest forever. And then he makes this tie: “in the order of Melchizedek,” okay? Which takes us into a whole new series. Melchizedek is a promised kind of priesthood that Jesus steps in and fulfills.

Now, some of you who are able to do this—you’re in Romans 1 now, right? What we need to do, thirdly, as we study and read the Bible, is we need to try and make the connections, like Melchizedek and Christ. We need to begin to see something specifically in the ministry and life of Christ.

Romans 1. Let’s just start at the beginning. Verse 1: “Paul,” he says, “I’m Paul. I’m a servant of Christ”—the “hi” is not there, but you get the idea—“I’m a servant of Christ Jesus, I’m called to be an apostle, and I’m set apart for the gospel of God.” Oh, he mentions the gospel? “The gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David.” How would we know that? Well, the Old Testament talks all about David’s son, the ultimate Son of David—and it wasn’t Solomon—who would one day sit on this throne forever. Okay, well, there’s a whole mess of Scripture there we can look at.

Verse 4: “And who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead”—oh, that’s the one we’re talking about—“Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Okay. Thirdly, let’s summarize it this way. The point is, we need to dig deeper into the life of Christ. When you study the Bible— that’s why we don’t just read the Old Testament straight through, then the New. Have you noticed how we do this? We try to keep you in the New Testament as much as possible. Read two chapters Old, one chapter New, because we want you to keep reading about the life of Christ. Because the more you read and dig deeply into the life of Christ—whether it’s making connections, which may be a 501-level connection between Christ and Melchizedek, or at least a connection between the Son of David and the fulfillment of the promises in Jesus—you’ll start to make connections that God called all this in Christ, and then Christ, through things like the resurrection, fulfilled all the promises.

Which again, let me get back to it: you cannot find another religious book that does this. You cannot find it. There is no body of religious writings that anticipates with any specificity this coming future person who fulfills it all—from the town he was born in, and the tribe that he was from, and the things that he would suffer, and the life after death. And Jesus went around saying, “This is exactly what was predicted of me in the Old Testament.”

You need to study and dig deep into the life of Christ. You should know everything there is to know about Jesus that is revealed to us in Scripture. What tribe was he from? What lineage? What about the two genealogies in Matthew and Luke? What are they trying to tell us about the backgrounds of Christ? Who was his cousin? Why was that important? We need to know all this. What did he do? How did each event in his life fulfill Old Testament Scripture?

If that seems overwhelming, at least take a harmony of the Gospels, and at least sit there and do your best to soak in every— I know it’s like quadraphonic sound—every angle of the life of Christ through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the writings of his life, and try and grasp all that you can about the life of Christ. And then keep your hand in the Old Testament and keep making the connections. And the more you make the connections, the more you’re going to go, “Wow. This guy was not kidding us when he said he is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through him.”

Now, that’s just the highlight. But we’re going to have to go to each section—God’s track record, God’s character, the specificity and uniqueness of Christ. And when we put those pieces together, we come away saying, “Yeah, my life may still be under examination. I may be trying to figure out whether or not my conversion was real and my fruit is real. But when it comes to the promise of God, that thing’s settled. It’s done. We know God is truthful. His word is truthful. This book is not just a book of principles and Proverbs. It is a historic foretelling of Christ, who fulfilled it at every turn.”

And therefore, we’re dealing with something unique here. It’s not Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam. No, this is on a whole other plane. You are in a whole different category with this thing. And as you look at that and you say, “If that’s what Christ has done, and God has spoken the truth, and I have figured out at least that my conversion to Christ seems to be genuine, and my fruit seems to be real,” then you can stand back and weather anything in this life, and you can say, “God is the anchor in my soul.”

The psalmists are great, because they’re writing hymns in the Old Testament that they would sing in “church,” so to speak, in Old Testament worship. So many of the psalms are pain, because they’re the poetry of the Old Testament of their hearts and the difficulties and the battles and their failures and their struggles. But almost every psalm is punctuated with that sense of confidence in God.

I love this one, Psalm 27. Don’t need to turn there, but he says this: after everything is said, he says, “I’m still confident of this.” Everything else may be crazy, but I’m confident of this: “I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. Therefore I will wait on the LORD. I will be strong. I will take heart, and I’ll wait on the LORD.”

That’s an attitude that I wish every Christian at Compass Bible Church had. Because if we did, we could do anything. We could weather whatever challenge comes our way. And I know that all of us have a little room to grow in our confidence, to have this anchor in the soul take root that is so firm and secure that nothing can shake us.

I’m confident of this, and I trust you can be too: we’re going to see the goodness of God one day. That we will be able to wait on the Lord because we’re going to walk into his kingdom behind the great King of the universe, the Judge of all the earth, Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior.

Let’s pray.

God, these are big, big words. Big words about a powerful, exclusive Savior who has promised that if we trust in him, even if we die, yet shall we live. And if we trust in you, even after that physical death, we will never die.

God, if that’s just a Sunday school story to help our kids stay off of drugs, help us to check out of this right now. There’s a lot better ways to keep our kids on track. But God, if this is really about the truth of our eternity and where we’re going to spend forever, then I pray we would settle these matters in our minds once and for all. That that kind of confidence in the promises of God and the claims of Christ would so dictate the resolve and the fortitude and the tenacity of our lives that it would be true, as Proverbs 28:1 says, that you would be able to look from heaven at your righteous ones and say, “Wow, they’re as bold as a lion.”

God, give us this kind of confidence for your glory—not confidence in ourselves, but a confidence in who we are in Christ and what you’ve done for us, where we’re headed, and a confidence that our reservation there is protected by the power of God.

God, we love you for this reminder, and I pray in the next three weeks we can unpack this, that it might shore up our spirit, that our heart would be strengthened by faith.

In Jesus’ name, amen.