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Mar 23, 2025

Anchored

Anchored

Passage: Hebrews 6:9-20

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: Worthy: His Worth, and a Life Worthy of Him

Hebrews 6: Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things — things that belong to salvation. For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do. And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

 

CENTRAL TEXT:  Hebrews 6:9-20

Heb. 6:9   Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things—things that belong to salvation. 10 For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do. 11 And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, 12 so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

Heb. 6:13   For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, 14 saying, “Surely I will bless you and multiply you.” 15 And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise. 16 For people swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation. 17 So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, 18 so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. 19 We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, 20 where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

 

PRAYER/SCRIPTURE READING/CONFESSION OF FAITH: John 14:1-7

LEADER:  “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me.
2 In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?
3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.
4 And you know the way to where I am going.”
5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”
6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
7 If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
The Word of the Lord

ALL:  Thanks be to God

 

CELEBRATION OF THE LORD’S SUPPER: 

CONFESSION OF SIN:  

LEADER:  Let us confess our sin to the Lord.

ALL:  Lord Most High, Your words can be in our minds, and Your praise upon our lips. But when the unexpected struggle comes, we find our hearts are in truth far from You–our poise, our strength moored to what wasn’t meant to anchor us. Forgive us for holding too tightly to what cannot hold us as You hold us. Restore to us, in every hour we need it, the sense of Your claim, Your love, Your forgiveness, Your future. And help us be anchored again, in the experience of hope, where our strength comes from.

ASSURANCE OF PARDON:  Micah 7:18

LEADER:  Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity 
and passing over transgression 
for the remnant of his inheritance? 
He does not retain his anger forever, 
because he delights in steadfast love.

ALL:   Thanks be to God

 

BENEDICTION: 1 John 3:2,3

LEADER: Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 3 And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.

DISMISSAL: Amen.

 

RELATED SCRIPTURES:

  • Exodus 26:33
  • Exodus 33:20
  • Leviticus 16:2
  • Mark 14:1-7
  • 1 Corinthians 13:12
  • 1 John 3:2, 3

 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: 

  1. When you were younger, what was of greatest importance to you–such that you needed it to be true or near to feel…ok…safe…whole? How did that thing/idea/dream/person shift in your mind over time (if it did)?
  2. Try to think like a 1st century Jewish Christian for a moment. What could be challenging about that new allegiance? We know next to nothing of the suffering many elsewhere face as a consequence of their allegiance to Jesus. What, though, even in our experience or thinking, largely insulated from physical harm, challenges our faithfulness to Jesus?
  3. The author appeals to the trustworthiness of God. How does the author make that case for that trustworthiness?
    • What is that reference to going behind the curtain into the inner place meant to signify to us? Why would that be a remarkable claim to imagine for those who first heard it?
    • How does that idea summarise the good news of Jesus?The author makes an interesting linguistic move by speaking of the anchor itself going behind the curtain into the inner place–like this: (HT: ChatGPT)
  4. What practically can one do–must one do–to “drop anchor” as we spoke of in the sermon? That is, what means and resources are we supplied so that the idea of the anchor may become, as often as needed,  an experience of being anchored anew?

 

ILLUSTRATIONS:  

 

Mar 23, 2025

 

 

QUOTES:  

 

  • The anchor…what a fitting image he has chosen. . . .[and] not only in things spiritual, but also in the affairs of this life, that one may find the power of hope great. Whatever it may be, in merchandise, in husbandry, in a military expedition, unless one sets this before him, he would not even touch the work.
    - John Chrysostom
  • The truth—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. . . . The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way —an honorable way—in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment.
    - Victor Frankl
  • It seemed to Peter Lake that the city, or as much as he had seen of it, was similar to the cloud wall. Its motion, the sounds erupting from all directions, the great vitality, struck him as a cloud wall laid flat, like a boiling carpet. But, whereas the wall was white, the city was a palette of upwelling colors. Its forms and geometry entranced him… He was overcome by feeling. The city was a box of fire, and he was inside, burning and shaking, pierced continually by sights too sharp to catalog.
    - Mark Helprin, Winter’s Tale
  • When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?
    - C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces
  • We shall not cease from exploration 
    And the end of all our exploring 
    Will be to arrive where we started 
    And know the place for the first time. 
    Through the unknown, remembered gate 
    When the last of earth left to discover 
    Is that which was the beginning; 
    At the source of the longest river 
    The voice of the hidden waterfall 
    And the children in the apple-tree 
    Not known, because not looked for 
    But heard, half-heard, in the stillness 
    Between two waves of the sea.
    - T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding”

 

  • We were there in the woods by the water 
    We left our packs up against that willow tree 
    We dove right in, keeping just what we were born with 
    Our memories, knowledge and dreams 

    As I swam away from our possessions 
    I imagined that they were gone forever more 
    And for once I was glad that all I treasured 
    Would still be with me as I reached other shore 

    So, let me dive into the water 
    Leave behind all that I've worked for 
    Except what I remember and believe 
    And when I stand on the farthest shore 
    I will have all I need. . . .
    - David Wilcox, “The Farthest Shore”

 

  • Human beings need God because their precarious and contingent lives can find final significance only in His almighty and eternal purposes, and because their fragmentary selves must find their ultimate center only in His transcendent love. If the meaning of men’s lives is centered solely in their own achievements, these too are vulnerable to the twists and turns of history, and their lives will always teeter on the abyss of pointlessness and inertia. And if men’s ultimate loyalty is centered in themselves, then the effect of their lives on others around them will be destructive of that community on which we all depend. Only in God is there an ultimate loyalty that does not breed injustice and cruelty, and a meaning from which nothing on heaven and earth can separate us.
    - Langdon Gilkey, Shantung Compound cited in Tim Keller’s Making Sense of God

 

 

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