Pressing Into Gods Promises

00:01 Praise the Lord. Let the church say amen. I want to give glory to God this morning. He is good, and His mercies are everlasting, and His truth endureth through all generations. Oh, that men would praise the Lord for His goodness, for His marvelous works unto the children of men. And we thank the Lord this morning. Our hearts are full with gratitude. 00:22 So many things God is doing in us and through us and to us. And I pray that we might continue to be faithful as He continues to do His molding and shaping work in us. 00:38 Part of the ability to be molded and shaped is to understand the promises of God and press into His promises. 00:45 And I've titled the message this morning, "Pressing into God's Promises." And this is from Hebrews 6:13-20, if you would turn there, please. 00:57 We're going to kind of dip back into verse 9 through 12 there and include those verses because it does help reset the context for our message this morning from the book of Hebrews as we continue moving forward through the book. 01:16 Begin reading Hebrews 6:9. "But beloved, we are confident of better things concerning you, yes, things that accompany salvation, though we speak in this manner. For God is not unjust to forget your work and labor of love, which you have shown toward His name in that you have ministered to the saints and do minister. 01:38 We desire that each one of you show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope until the end, that you do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. For when God made a promise to Abraham, because He could swear by no one greater, 01:57 He swore by Himself, saying, 'Surely blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply you.' And so after He had patiently endured, He obtained the promise. For men indeed swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is for them an end of all dispute. 02:17 Thus, God determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, 02:33 we might have strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us. 02:40 This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the presence behind the veil, where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus, having become high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek." May God add His blessing to His word this morning. 03:01 The date was January 20, 2009, as Supreme Court Justice John Roberts administered the oath of office to incoming President Barack Obama. As they stood before millions and millions of watching eyes through television, both here at home and abroad, Justice Roberts asked Obama, 03:20 "Are you ready to are you prepared to take the oath, Senator?" And Obama replied, "I am." Roberts began, "I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear." And then about halfway through that first line, Obama interrupted him and began repeating the line. 03:40 And there's some confusion there about what should be said. And then Roberts quoted the next line of the oath, but the quotation was incorrect. He was supposed to say that, "I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States." Instead, Roberts said that, 03:59 "I will execute the office of President to the United States faithfully." He had moved the word faithfully to the end of the sentence. So Obama paused to allow Roberts to correct himself, then repeated the oath as Roberts had instructed him to. So from there onward, the oath was administered correctly. 04:19 But this began to make some legal lawyers nervous as they contemplated whether or not the oath had been said right. And it obviously hadn't been. The Constitution says how that oath should be administered and affirmed. And so could this be a loophole that some people could then accuse Obama of being an illegitimate president? 04:41 So White House Counsel Greg Craig decided to take no chances. 04:46 And his suggestion was that the next day that President Obama and John Roberts would correct the matters and in a private ceremony make the oath correctly. Well, that's interesting because words do mean things. And in our constitutional republic, 05:07 legal matters, words matter. Correctness matters if things are to be legitimate and legal. Well, here we have this morning the fact that God has made some promises. And we don't have to worry about whether He said it right. We don't have to worry about the order of His words. We don't have to worry about whether or not He put the punctuation in the right place or anything. 05:27 What God said, He swore by Himself that He would keep His promise. And so we this morning come to this passage of Scripture where we want to evaluate what the promise of God looks like. 05:42 Pressing into God's promises, understanding the oath that God has taken and the promise that God has made to His people in the New Covenant. Now here we have a little bit of context. You remember two weeks ago, I believe it was, that Brother Dwayne preached on the first part of chapter 6, 06:02 asking the question, "Can a person be renewed unto repentance if they have fallen away?" And of course, we have this morning a wonderful example that a person can be renewed to repentance. But I believe Dwayne hit the nail on the head and put it helped me to understand when he said, "If you go looking out of the if you go looking for salvation anywhere else but Jesus, 06:24 you won't find any. You will not find any. He is the salvation for which we long have prayed. And there is none other." And so as long as a person continues to persist in unbelief, there's no other sacrifice for sins. They must come back to the sacrifice that they objected to initially. 06:45 That is to the cross. And so the apostle who's writing this, we had concluded it may have been Barnabas, but whoever the writer is, says in verse 9, "We are confident of better things for you folks," that he's writing to, "that accompany salvation." And God is watching. God is keeping track. 07:04 God is taking record. He's taking note. And He is not unjust to forget. That's a negative way of saying a positive that He remembers. But this is an emphatic way of saying that whatever you have done for God in His name, ministering to the saints, ministering to the lost, desiring to be diligent in your faith, 07:24 laying hold of the promises of God, whatever you have done, God is noticing. God is keeping a record. And He will reward. And we must press into God's promises with that type of faith. And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope until the end, 07:45 and that you don't become lazy and sluggish and apathetic, but that you imitate those who through faith and patience have received and inherited the promises. Because He had told them earlier in chapter 6 that they had grown excuse me. I think it was in the end of chapter 5 that they had grown lazy. 08:03 And they were not following through with the diligence of their faith that they once had. But they were growing careless and sluggish and lazy. And so He's spurring them on by faithful patience, by faith and patience in verse 12, you can inherit the promises. 08:22 Now we want to press into the promises of God. And so He says, "We are confident that you have not abandoned the faith. You are bringing forth good fruit. And God cannot possibly forget." It is not even remotely possible that God will overlook your service, that God will overlook your faithfulness. 08:43 He cannot do that because it says in verse 10, "For Him to overlook your service and your ministry and your faithfulness would make Him Himself be unfaithful." And God is not unfaithful. He's not unjust. He's not unfair. And so we give full diligence to make our calling and election sure. 09:04 So in that context, we come this morning to the text 13 through 20, where we look at the promise, the permanence, and the promise, 09:18 the permanence, and the protection. The promise, the permanence, and the protection. What is this promise that He's talking about? 09:27 Well, in this whole book, He's talking about the promise of God in the New Covenant, the New Covenant being superior to the Old Covenant because Christ is the instituter and the implementer and the promiser and the guaranteer of the New Covenant. And so we have what is in Christ is a great thing to press into. 09:48 It is the ultimate reality to press into. It is the ultimate promise of God. And He uses Abraham as an example. So God made a promise to Abraham. And the promise to Abraham could be summarized like this: that Abraham would become a great nation, that Abraham would possess the land of Canaan, 10:10 and that Abraham would be a great blessing to the whole earth. That is a summary of the promises of God to Abraham. And you recall in Genesis 15 how that God entered into a covenant relationship with Abraham. And He took some doves and some clean birds and some animals of sacrifice. And He laid out those animals of sacrifice. 10:31 And He made a path down the middle. 10:33 And while Abraham fell into a deep sleep, God passed down through the middle of those offerings to make a covenant with Abraham, a very visible expression which was then confirmed by the ordinance of circumcision. 10:52 And God made a covenant with Abraham that is unnegotiable, non-negotiable. God negotiated the terms. God initiated the terms. God initiated the covenant. All Abraham had to do was receive it and believe it. And the Bible says that Abraham believed God, and it was accounted unto him for righteousness. 11:14 God gave Abram, Abraham, Abram was his initial name, Abraham, some evidences of that covenant, circumcision being one of them, the other one being a change of name. Now in the Hebrew, the name Abram means exalted father, well, or high father. And so Abraham, 11:34 being a prince among men and being a wealthy man, being a nobleman, could bear that name. But then after God made the covenant with him, God changed his name to Abraham. And Abraham means the father of a multitude. And so Abraham received this by faith. 11:53 And so I can imagine there were times when Abraham was a little bit embarrassed of his name. "What's your name?" "My name's Abraham." "Oh, father of a multitude. How many children do you have?" "None." "Well, I have one, but he's an illegitimate son, so I had to send him away to make his own way." "I really just have one and then and and and none, 12:13 actually." "And and and and well, well, how come you're calling yourself father of a multitude?" And then he got one son after 25 years. He waited for that promise of one covenant son for 25 years and then waited another 60 years for grandchildren. 12:34 And then he only got two, Jacob and Esau. 12:38 And so what you have here is Abraham by faith receiving the name Abraham, father of a multitude, and having a very small Thanksgiving dinner, very small table to fit everybody around. And yet he received it by faith. 13:00 And he received enough by patiently waiting because his focus, his his his confidence was in the promise of God, the oath that God had taken to be faithful. 13:14 And so we have here Abraham's promise of the covenant with him as an example then of God's promise with us in Jesus Christ at the cross. And we must also wait patiently for it, enduringly. Verse 15, 13:34 patiently enduring, he obtained the promise. Now what was this about the permanence then? 13:41 The permanence of this covenant was the fact that God pulled out all of the stops, as it were, to make sure that Abraham knew that the whole faith and credit and confidence of this promise is based on God's character and His riches 14:00 and His resources and His name and His personhood. It's based upon God and not some not some just an agreement, but a covenant, an oath. 14:13 And the Scripture says here that God appealed to Himself as not only the giver of the promise but the guaranteer of the promise. Now if we enter into a contract and I agree and borrow and agree to purchase something and you agree to sell it to me, 14:32 oftentimes there must be some collateral behind that promise. There must be some collateral behind that agreement. So if I borrow from the bank, they're looking for collateral. They're looking for, "How is this going to get paid out? How is this going to flesh itself out?" And and and and so we look for the promisee see if I get this right, 14:54 the promisee, the purchaser, 14:57 being faithful to fully fulfill what he is promising. And if I default, I default to the bank and they get the property or whatever. And so it is a little bit different here in this promise. 15:17 God is offering no collateral except Himself. He is offering Himself as full collateral. There's nobody else to appeal to. There's no one that needs to be appealed to. He is the ultimate reality. 15:37 And He uses a term here. He uses it in verse 17 and in 18, immutability, immutability and immutable, thus determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel and by two immutable things. 15:58 The word simply means unchangeableness, the unchangeableness of His counsel that God does not change. He is forever the same. This is consistent with Scripture, Malachi 3:6, "For I am the Lord. I change not." Psalm 33, "The counsel of the Lord standeth forever, 16:20 the thoughts of His heart to all generations." Psalm 148, "He hath also established them," that is the creation commandments, "forever and ever He hath made a decree which shall not pass." Isaiah 14:27, "For the Lord of hosts hath purposed, 16:40 and who shall disannul it?" He made a promise. No one is powerful enough to break that promise. And He Himself is the collateral and the guarantee of the promise being fulfilled. Hebrews 1:12, "You are the same, and your ways will have no end." And of course, 17:01 that promise in Hebrews 13:8, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever." The "I am that I am" has spoken. The "I am that I am," the ultimate reality, has spoken to Abraham, has spoken to Isaac, 17:22 has spoken to Jacob. He spoke to Moses. He made a vow, "You will not enter into the land of Canaan." He spoke to Eli, "Your sons shall be destroyed and your household eliminated." He made a promise to Messiah. We've read about that up in chapter 1 and 2. 17:40 "This day have I spoken that to my son whom I made heir of all things." He's made promises and vows against nations. And He made vows to David, "You will always have your seed sitting upon the throne." God made some oaths. He took some oaths. 17:57 He made promises and swore by Himself because He is the is the guarantee of the promise, the promise and the oath. He says two immutable things. What are the two immutable things here in verse 18? What are the two unchangeable things? The first one is the promise. 18:17 It's a little hard to decipher that from the text. But I believe the first one is the promise. He made the promise, which is a reflection of His character. And then He took the oath, which is a reflection of His superiority. 18:30 Because as He goes on to say, "The lesser swears by the greater." And the greater is appealed to by the oath because the lesser is not superior but rather inferior. And so when He looked at what He could swear by, 18:49 God says, "There's nothing greater and no one greater than Myself. So I will swear by Myself that I will..." Folks, the impact of this is that God's promises, as He has revealed them, as He has promised them, and as He has given us an oath in the New Covenant in Christ, 19:11 cannot, will not, under any circumstances, be annulled. It is solid. It is firm. It is forever. It is settled. We can take it to the bank if you want to put it that way. He confirmed it with an oath. 19:31 An oath is to mediate between two parties. They pledge themselves to one another, and they appeal to someone stronger than themselves to hold them accountable for that pledge. An oath is a call to a higher power to keep one accountable to one's word. 19:51 And so when we come into a court of law, people are asked the question, "Do you swear?" We'll talk about that in a minute. "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? 20:07 So help me, God." So here you have the state and the witness entering into an agreement of truth and appealing, sometimes with a hand on the Bible, to appeal to the truth and to appeal to, "So help me, 20:23 God," that God is watching to reward and to condemn the validity of this of this covenant so that if we break the covenant of truth, God will judge. And if we keep the covenant of truth, God will reward through establishing this word. 20:46 Now you say, "How is it then that God, swearing by Himself an oath, tells us not to swear?" Now we face a dilemma. We face a dilemma that we will work out here in a moment. Furthermore, 21:06 so God God Himself has made oaths. And He has instructed His people to swear their oaths by His name only. Look in the Old Testament. And God would say, "When you swear your oaths, you make your agreements. You enter into your covenants. 21:26 Do so by My name and not by a false god." Why would He do that? Well, because He wanted to emphasize to the people that He is the ultimate authority and not Baal or Asheroth or some pagan god. And so when He says, "When you enter into your agreements, you swear and you give an oath and you appeal to Me because I am the ultimate judge. 21:47 I am the ultimate authority. You do not appeal to the gods around you because those are not your god." But how does this mesh with the instruction not to swear at all? Turn with me to Matthew chapter 5. We're going to put a big parenthesis around this. 22:09 And I want to talk to you about swearing. Boy, if there's ever been a culture, ever been a time, ever been a need to talk about swearing, it's this culture. It's this time. It's this day. It is all around us. 22:28 What do we do with a profane culture? And what do we do with profanity? And what do we do with oaths? 22:40 Well, first of all, we recognize that the Old Testament is superseded by the New Testament. And so that God gave allowance for some things in the Old Testament that He comes along in the New Testament and says, "Just don't do it. Don't do it at all." And so Jesus coming along in the Sermon on the Mount, 23:01 by the way, 23:01 this is also reflected in James chapter 5:12, almost word for word, not quite as long, but almost word for word, James says the same thing. Jesus says, Matthew 5:33, "Again, you have heard that it was said of those of old, 23:20 'You shall not swear falsely.'" Okay, that was condemned. "But you may swear but not falsely, but shall perform your oaths to the Lord." Okay, we get that, Old Testament. "But I say to you, do not swear at all." There you have it. Can't get much clearer than that. 23:40 "Do not swear at all, neither by heaven, for it is God's throne, nor by the earth, for it is His footstool, nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king. Nor shall you swear by your head because you cannot make one hair white or black, but let your yes be yes and your no no. 24:00 For whatever is more than these is from the evil one." James 5:12 says, "But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by earth, neither by any other oath, but let your yeah be yeah and your nay nay, lest ye fall into condemnation." What is going on here? 24:21 Why is God swearing and we're not? We're told not to. Well, as I won't go into all the details of what the possibilities can be here, but I like to define what an oath is. There are several types of swearing. 24:39 Number one, an oath can be defined as a solemn affirmation or declaration made with an appeal to God for the truth of what is affirmed. And so we're swearing in God's name to validate the truth. 25:00 That type of swearing is unnecessary for a Christian who walks completely in the truth. Jesus said, "Let your yes be yes and your no be no." What does that mean? It means that we should be men and women of total truthfulness. 25:22 Here's the point. The point is to swear an oath of an unbeliever does not make him a credible witness. He can still swear under oath. I mean, he can still lie under oath. Oh, perjury may set in. But in this day and age, perjury means very, very little. 25:42 People lie under oath all the time. So an oath does not make a dishonest person honest. And an oath does not make an honest person more honest. He is just honest. He is a person of His word. So Jesus said, "Let your yes be yes and your no be no." You don't need more than that. 26:04 And I'm thankful that in our system of government here in the U.S., our framers of a constitution recognized those groups who had conscience against swearing, the swearing of oaths, primarily the Anabaptist people and maybe even the Quakers. 26:21 I'm not sure about the Quakers, but I believe that they would not swear the oath either, at least historically. And they allowed us legal tenure in the constitution to use another term to say, "I affirm." Now you say, "That's just a technicality." Well, it's a technicality with a meaning. 26:41 The meaning is that we can affirm the truth of our testimony, but that is not taking the Lord's name and attaching it to something profane. Now that is part of what it means here that we are with the judicial oath. 27:02 The judicial oath, swearing under oath of governments and of courts of law, basically is unnecessary due to the fact that we are to be people of the truth. I'll give you an example about credibility. Years ago, 27:22 we were going to Westville in a prison service. And I had never been to Westville before. And the Sandy Ridge people and Bethel people had gone to Westville many, many, many, many, many times through the years. They were regulars there. 27:42 And so we pulled up, 27:44 went to the desk there where we're to sign in and get ready to enter into the institution. 27:52 And some of the people at the institution did not know Gospel Echoes. Now, Gospel Echoes was known at Westville, but they didn't know us. And they didn't know I didn't know them the first time that we were ever there. And there was some confusion about who we were in relationship to another group that had showed up. 28:14 There was another group that they had double booked the same chapel. There's like three or four institutions within the institution, sections in Westville. And we were double booked in a chapel. And so that was they were trying to figure out this confusion there with the people that were in charge of that shift. I think it was Dave Hosteller and some others. 28:35 Might have even been Jonai Beachy and some of the others back then. This is almost 30 years ago. We're very well known to the Westville administration. 28:45 And I heard, I overheard one of the people at the desk say, "These guys are okay because they're with the Sandy Ridge people." 28:58 In other words, you can trust Sandy Ridge. We know them. We know their credibility. We know their integrity. We know that they are who they claim to be. And if this group is with them, they're coming in. They get priority over the other group. And we actually got an air conditioned chapel that hot summer night instead of a non-air conditioned one, 29:18 which is what the other group was lobbying for. We didn't know the difference. At any rate, my point is simply this. That group was known as people of integrity. And the church of Jesus Christ, the Christian community, need not swear an oath if we are known as people of our word. 29:42 When we keep our word, when we extend, we shouldn't even need a handshake. The old timers make an agreement, shake hands on the deal, and that's the end of it. We don't need to even write it down. Well, unfortunately, not all Christians are that way. 30:02 And not even all Anabaptists are that way anymore. But God's people should be. When we give our word, that's our bond. That's our bond. So the judicial oath is unnecessary because we are people of truthfulness. 30:24 But that's not the only kind of oath that there is. One of the reasons that people take oaths is to control the outcome of an agreement. And so they will appeal to something great in order to control the outcome of an agreement. And so they will appeal to heaven. 30:44 If you don't want to use God's name, well, then we'll make an agreement for heaven's sakes. You heard that expression? That's actually a form of swearing for heaven's sakes. Well, why would you say why would you bring heaven into this? What does that have to do with anything? Or good lands. Well, 31:03 here we're swearing by the earth, idle words, idle words. 31:11 And when you trace some of these phrases back, you actually find that they are euphemisms. A euphemism is a euphemism is a statement that's made to mean as a substitute for something else that would be unacceptable. 31:29 I'm not going to say the word this morning, but you know the word when somebody we call the F word? Instead, people use a euphemism, a freaking something. I don't like that. You know why I don't like that? Because it's a euphemism. 31:49 It is a substitute word that would, if you use the real word, would be unacceptable. And so they use a substitute word. Now, I hope you're not offended this morning. I just share that as an example of a euphemism. 32:07 H-E-C-K would be another one as a euphemism for hell. G-O-S-H, G-O-L-L-Y as a euphemism for God. 32:21 The Bible says in Matthew chapter 12:36 that every idle word that we utter will be given account of on the day of judgment. Think about that. What does the word idle mean there? It means useless, careless, or empty. Some people swear by their dead relatives. 32:40 And then not to mention the fact that people are damning things all the time, 32:47 damning this, damning that. Do we know what that means? 32:52 To actually assign someone something to hell? We do not have that power. We do not have that authority. We do not have that right. 33:02 And furthermore, we don't have that desire to condemn people and situations and things to hell. And yet we hear this stuff all around us all the time. Another euphemism would be the term D-A-N-G as a term for D-A-M-N. 33:25 And so when we speak, we have to be careful what we're saying because there's a whole lot more being communicated that we may not even be aware of. I appeal to my experience as about a I don't know what age I was, second, third grade. 33:42 And a couple of us at school, it was public school, but most of us were Mennonites and cousins. And it was a little small two-room, two-classroom school. And we got a hold of a phrase that I didn't know was swearing. Honestly, I honestly didn't know. 34:01 And the teacher told my parents that Todd and some other kids I don't know if you had mentioned the other kids, but Todd at least was walking around the school swearing. I had no idea, really, until my parents said, "What is this about you swearing at school?" I don't know. 34:23 And I didn't. But I found out. 34:30 And so when we say certain things, we better be prepared for the full impact of what those things mean. And Jesus just said, "Keep it simple. Let your yes be yes and your no no. 34:45 In fact, you are so out of control that you cannot 34:51 be fully in control. You can't make your hair white or black. You can do very, very little to persuade or to prescribe an outcome. Just be honest, be transparent, be open, be simple, tell the truth, and leave it at that." Wow, 35:12 that would clean up our speech considerably. Now, how is it that God can swear? Well, for one thing, God is not taking His own name in vain. We didn't even talk about that. That's one of the commandments. 35:29 "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." And the useless word and the useless conversation, emptiness, idleness. And so God's not taking His own name in vain. If we were to use His name in that way, we would be. 35:48 But He's putting Himself out as the ultimate reality. And He is declaring on His own credibility. He's not assuming on the credibility of others. He is not trying to weigh in and overstate His case like some swearing does. 36:08 And neither is He trying to influence the outcome that He can't influence. He can make the hair white or black. He can determine the future. And He is the one who controls all things. And so He has that right and authority because He's God. We're not. 36:29 So think about that. Think about that. Why does it say, "Swear not at all"? But that's what it says. So the protection, coming back to our text here today, coming back to our text, the protection is in verse 19 and 20, 36:49 verse 18, that we might have strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us. This hope we have is an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the presence behind the veil where the forerunner has entered for us, 37:09 even Jesus, our High Priest. So He's talking here about the protection that we have for the soul. He speaks in the most emphatic language possible to assure us that our salvation is secure in Christ because of who has made the oath, who has kept the oath, 37:28 and who is the guarantee and the collateral. And then He says, "We have a place to flee. We have fled to this place behind the veil." And this hope for the soul is what keeps us sure and steadfast, as the song says. 37:48 We have this in Christ. We have the image here when He says, verse 18, of fleeing for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us. What's the Old Testament imagery here? As they would read this, they didn't understand. Where did you flee for refuge? You fled for refuge to the city of refuge. 38:08 Remember those cities of refuge? Six on the west side of the Jordan or three. Three on the west side, three on the east side of the Jordan, in close proximity enough that if someone accidentally killed someone, they could flee to the city of refuge, make their case of their innocence, non-premeditated. 38:28 It was not premeditated. It was an accidental death. They could make their case to the elders of the city. They would let Him in, take that case to the people. They would rule it as not a homicide, but as manslaughter, non-intentional manslaughter. 38:43 And that person would be safe in that city of refuge as long as they stayed in the city of refuge until the death of the High Priest. Then they would be free. And the avenger of blood, the one who was commissioned by the family to get justice and to kill the killer, would not be able to avenge that blood because He's in a city of refuge. 39:03 He is in a city of protection. And the writer here is saying that this whole thing is fulfilled in Christ, who is our protection. He takes us not just into the city of refuge. He takes us into the very holy of holies behind the veil. 39:25 He enters into the presence behind the veil. That is the veil of the tabernacle, the veil of the temple. And it shows us of the security that we have in Christ as we are with Him behind the veil. In the Book of Kings, you see in First Kings chapter one and chapter two or three, 39:46 you see people who would flee to the horns of the altar. Interesting observation. They'd flee. They'd lay hold on the horns of the altar. And they would say, "Protect me. Protect me by God." And then they would have to deal with that. It was a safe place. It was a sacred place. They'd lay hold of the horns of the altar. 40:07 Well, this is more sure than the horns of the altar. This is into the very presence of God, the city of refuge, which is a city reflecting the protection of Jesus Christ, that our salvation is based upon the faithfulness and the promises of God. And so as we apply this this morning, as we wrap this up, 40:27 the first application that we must make is that our salvation is secure in Christ. There are those, myself included in times past, who wrestled with assurance of salvation. There is a way, a very simple way I didn't say easy, 40:48 but very simple way to overcome the lack of assurance of salvation. And that is to put your confidence in the promise of God who swore by an oath of Himself. 41:03 And many times, as a young person, and even since I've had to come back when the tempter, when the tempter would give us doubts and fears, to come back to scriptures like John 3:16, that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 41:26 Passages like John 1:12, as many as received Him, to them gave He the legal right and authority to be called the children of God, even to them that believe on His name. First John 5:13, these things I have written unto you that believe in the name of the Son of God, 41:45 that ye may know that you have eternal life. Matthew chapter 9:2, when Jesus would tell people, "Be of good cheer. Your sins are forgiven you. And you can take the promises of God, which are yea and amen." God has not fudged around with His promises trying to with euphemisms. 42:05 He just lays it out there and says, "If you believe and repent, you are forgiven. And your confidence is sure." Another thing, by way of application that we see in this passage is the steadfastness of the inner man. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, 42:26 both sure and steadfast. Our anchor, our soul can be anchored in the Lord, anchored sure and steadfast. We have an anchor that keeps the soul steadfast and sure as the billows roll, fastened to the rock that cannot move, 42:46 anchored firm and deep in the Savior's love. Oh, the promises that God has made, Isaiah 43, fear not, for I have redeemed thee. I have called thee by thy name. Thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee. And through the floods, they shall not over through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee. 43:07 When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned. Neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Savior. And God has made a vow that we can be protected, that we are protected. Isaiah 41:10, fear not, I am with thee. Be not dismayed, for I am thy God. 43:28 I will strengthen thee. Yea, I will help thee. Yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. We can take it to the bank, if you want to use that term. We can take it to the bank. And then the final application, this hope, the hope of eternal life, 43:48 the hope of a better day, the hope of the city of refuge, the firmness of the foundation that we grasp. There is a day coming that will make everything that we have experienced fade into oblivion and insignificance by comparison. 44:08 And we rest in that hope. Basic kind of definition for hope is a belief that tomorrow and the tomorrows will be better than the todays. And we won't live very long or very well without that hope, that the tomorrows, ultimately the tomorrow of glory, 44:28 will be better than the trouble of today. I close with this song. Not going to sing it. Going to read it. How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in God's excellent word. What more can be said than to you God has said, 44:47 to you who for refuge to Jesus have fled? Fear not, I am with thee. Oh, be not dismayed, for I am thy God and will still give thee aid. I'll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand upheld by my righteous omnipotent hand. When through the deep waters I call thee to go, 45:08 the rivers of sorrow shall not overflow. For I will be near thee, thy troubles to bless and sanctify to thee thy deepest distress. When through fiery trials the pathway shall lie, my grace all-sufficient shall be thy supply. The flame shall not hurt thee. I only design thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine. 45:30 And then this one I love so much, the soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose. I will not, I will not desert to its foes. That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake, I'll never, no, 45:49 never, no, never forsake. You can take it to the bank. You can build your life on it. You can rest assured in it. 46:01 Father in heaven, thank you for this passage this morning, which is so rich in helping us see the incredible credibility of God, who has made promises to us that for you to not fulfill would make you unrighteous, 46:24 unjust, and unfaithful. 46:27 And we know that is against your very nature and that you will remember everything that we have done in your name, for your kingdom, for your glory, through your Son, by your Spirit, to whom we commit ourselves this morning once again. In Jesus' name. Amen.