1 Valley View Chapel October 12, 2014 God s Final Answer Part 14 The Anchor of the Soul Hebrews 6:13-20 Introduction The Day America Told the Truth is a book written by James Patterson and Peter Kim. It is based on a survey of 1,800 questions given to 2,000 people in 50 locations. The authors conclusion: We are a nation of liars. Patterson and Kim cited a national survey in which 91 percent of Americans admitted to lying regularly. Thirty-six percent of those surveyed confessed to telling serious lies which hurt others are totally self-serving or break the law. According to the IRS over 10,000,000 taxpayers "lie on their tax forms." 80% of all resumes are misleading. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey once ran a help-wanted ad for electricians with expertise at using Sontag connectors. They received 170 responses, even though there is no such thing as a Sontag connector. The Authority ran the ad to find out how many applicants falsify resumes. An alarming percentage of doctors lie on their bills to health insurance providers. 95% of college students surveyed were willing to tell at least one lie to a potential employer to win a job. In 2013 Reader's Digest magazine nominated actor Tom Hanks as "the most trusted man in the world. On the Late Show David Letterman asked Hanks what he's done to become so trustworthy. Hanks explained: What do I do exactly to earn this trust? I'm honest because I tell people I'm lying to them. Because I'm in show business somebody will send me a project and there is no way I'm going to do it because it stinks and it's lousy and I don't want to do it. But I will say, I'm lying to you right now, but I love this thing so much, I want to do it, but I can't because I have to publicize a movie in Japan. By the way, I'm lying to you. The things I just said are lies, but don't you feel better? But then when I'm supposed to be in Japan to promote my new movie I turn up in the crowd at a [hockey] game and it kind of blows it. But then I tell him, But, dude, I opened the conversation by saying, I'm lying to you." I don t know if you are able to translate Tom s explanation into sense but I understood it enough to get the distinct impression that Tom Hanks, the most trusted man in America, lies whenever it suits his purpose. Yet most of us would agree that it s of utmost importance to tell the truth to the people who are closest to us. Healthy relationships are based on trust. Someone once likened trust to water in a bottle. To betray a trust is like pouring water from the bottle into the dirt. It will take a miracle to put the water back into the bottle and it takes a miracle of forgiveness and grace to regain trust once having been lost.
2 If it s important that people tell the truth, it s infinitely more important that God tells us the truth. We have an eternity riding on what God says. Several thousand years ago a man named Abraham had a conversation with God. God told him things and made promises. Abraham did two things in response: he believed what God said and he acted on what God said. Satan s most basic strategy when it comes to driving a wedge in any relationship is to sow a seed of distrust. When a husband and wife can t trust each other; when parents and children can t trust each other; when employers and employees can t trust each other; when friends can t trust each other; when church members can t trust their spiritual leaders all kinds of negative and destructive consequences can, and almost always will, happen. Were you to study the punctuation marks in the opening chapters of Genesis you would find periods, commas, quotation marks, dashes, parentheses, and semi-colons. You won t find a question mark until you come to the first verse of the third chapter. Satan asked the first question in the Bible and he put it to Eve in the Garden of Eden: Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" Genesis 3:1 (NIV) The first question in the Bible contained not only the first temptation in history but the most sinister and dangerous temptation of all. Indeed it is the mother of all temptations for every temptation known to the human race can trace its roots back to the question Did God really say? because every temptation is at its core is an invitation to doubt the word of God. God promised Abraham that he would have many descendents and be the father of a mighty nation. He said in Genesis 22:17-18, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me." (NIV) Hebrews 6:14 is the Cliff Notes version of that promise I will surely bless you and give you many descendents. Abraham was 75 years-old when he heard God s promise. He and Sarah, who was well past the age of being able to have children, were childless. Yet Abraham believed the promise of God. Why did he believe God? For two reasons because God said it and because God confirmed what he said by taking an oath. Oaths were given for people, not for God. There s only one reason why we take an oath in a court of law or before entering military service or being sworn in as a citizen or while pledging allegiance to the flag or repeating a vow of holy matrimony: because so many people will lie at the drop of a hat. Somehow social custom thinks that imposing an oath puts added pressure on people to tell the truth although that idea seems to have gone the way of the eight-track tape. But in the world of ancient Hebrew culture, people generally feared God. Lying under oath was considered a transgression of the Third Commandment against misusing the name of
3 God and thus deserved the punishment of God. Therefore, human oaths that invoked the name of God were an assurance that a man would carry out his word. God did not have to put himself under an oath to Abraham, but he did in order to reassure Abraham that he would make good on his word. A life-lesson emerges in today s account of God s promises to Abraham, and I d like to explore it in the time that remains. It is contained in verse 15 - Then Abraham waited patiently, and he received what God had promised. Hebrews 6:15 (NLT) Abraham waited patiently for God to fulfill his promise and give him a son. Delay Is Not Denial How much patience did Abraham need? A boatload! He was 75 when God made his initial promise in Genesis 12:2-3. He was 100 when Isaac was born in Genesis 21:2. But God hadn t simply promised him a son. He promised that from Abraham would come a great nation. It wasn t for another 60 years that Jacob and Esau were born and from Jacob came 12 sons who would constitute the 12 tribes of Israel. Abraham never saw the fulfillment of God s promise, only the beginning stages. Not many Abrahams live in my neighborhood and probably not in yours either. An article on NPR illustrated our impatience: We speed date. Eat fast food. Use the self-checkout lines in grocery stores. Pay extra for overnight shipping. Honk when the light turns green. Speak in half sentences. We tweet stories in 140 characters or less. We cut corners, take shortcuts. We t-x-t. I admit it. I m a citizen of the impatient nation. I ve gone into restaurants and if I m not seated in what I consider a reasonable length of time, I ve left and gone someplace else. I don t like it when the service station attendant is in his little booth gabbing on his cell phone instead of hustling over to my car to fill it up. I ve been known to hang up the phone if I m kept too long on hold. But what about when God puts me on hold? What about when I don t get what I want when I want it from him in what I consider a timely manner? I would do well to remember that God put Jacob on hold for 14 years while he worked for Laban, his future father-in-law, in order to win the hand of Rachel. God put Joseph on hold for two years while he sat in a miserable Egyptian prison an innocent man suffering the consequences of trumped-up charges. The Israelites were put on hold for 70 years while they lived in Babylonian captivity until King Cyrus of Persia told them they could go home. Simeon and Anna were put on hold for 80 years while they served faithfully in the Temple, waiting in patient expectation to see their promised Messiah. One benefit is sure to emerge when we make up our minds that we will wait patiently and expectantly for God to move in our lives.
4 Waiting builds faith. Like just about everything else in life, faith grows through exercise. Thus the longer we wait in confident expectation, the stronger becomes our faith. Hebrews 11:1 describes the essence of faith: Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see. (NLT) Faith is believing what we cannot see. And the longer we can t see it, the stronger our faith grows. At least that s the way it s supposed to work. Some people disagree. Samuel Beckett expressed his quarrel with faith in his 1953 play, Waiting for Godot. The play centers around two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, who wait in vain for someone named Godot. They don t know who Godot is; they have no idea when he will show up; or what he plans to do when he does show up. But they continue to wait for his arrival. Godot is a metaphor for God who Beckett believes will never show up because he doesn t exist. For Vladimir and Estragon, waiting did not build faith. It only built despair. At the end of the play, the two men decide that if Godot doesn t come the next day, they will commit suicide. Abraham s faith didn t work that way. The longer he waited, the bigger, stronger, more powerful, more hopeful and more confident Abraham s faith became. Abraham s faith in God s promises was the anchor for his soul. Faith that God would keep his word in every respect was what kept him steady and secure in the midst of life s storms and uncertainties. For almost 2,000 years the Church of Jesus Christ has waited for the glorious and triumphant return of Jesus Christ to put right everything that sinful humanity has messed up. More than 1900 years ago the Apostle Paul exhorted his young friend Titus: For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. (ESV) And today October 12, 2014 the Church of Jesus Christ still waits with confident faith and joyful expectation for our Lord to return exactly as he promised. The author of Hebrews declared in verse 19 that this confident belief that God will keep his word is the anchor for our souls. Faith in God s promises gets us through our darkest day. Almost a century ago, faith in one man s word was the anchor that tethered the hopes of a group to the rock that kept them alive under otherwise impossible circumstances. Conclusion On Friday, August 1, 1914, Ernest Shackleton and 27 men left England on a ship called the Endurance to begin a journey to the South Pole. By December 5 th, they had reached South Georgia in Antarctica. On December 7 th, the Endurance got stuck in an ice pack where it remained until it was crushed and sank on November 21, 1915.
5 Shackleton and his men floated on an iceberg until April 12, 1916 when they saw a land mass they named Elephant Island. The men launched their 2 rowboats and landed on this lonely and unexplored spot of earth. Knowing that they would never be rescued unless something was done, Shackleton and 4 other men set out in a rowboat on April 24, 1916 across the frigid and dangerous sea in an attempt to get back to South Georgia - 800 miles away the closest place where help could be obtained. It seemed like an impossible venture, but it was their only hope. The captain s parting words to the 23 men who stayed behind on Elephant Island was a promise to return for them. A little more than four months later, Ernest Shackleton, aboard a Chilean steamer called the YELCHO came back to Elephant Island well, almost back. The YELCHO was within a few miles of Elephant Island but there was still the challenge of getting a rowboat to land on shore for the actual rescue through a small opening of pack ice. Shackleton and a few men got in the rescue boat and rowed like mad for shore before the ice closed up. All 23 men were standing on shore, packed and ready to leave. Within a half hour, every man was rescued and on board the YELCHO. As the YELCHO steamed away from Elephant Island, Shackleton asked Frank Wild, the man he had left in charge, how they knew that he was coming on that very day. Wild answered: Sir, you said that you would come back for us, and we never gave up hope. Whenever the sea was partly clear of ice, we rolled up our sleeping bags and packed our things, saying, Maybe Shackleton will come today. We were always ready for your coming. The men s faith in their captain s promise had been the anchor of their souls. It s what gave them the strength and the hope to endure another day. On August 30, 1916 their faith became sight. And there is coming a day and it s as sure as the promises of God when we shall behold him face-to-face. Through the trials, tribulations, and tears of this earthly journey, let us remain anchored to the solid rock of the Apostle Paul s Spirit-inspired, hope-fueled declaration in 2 Corinthians 1:20: For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God.
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