Colleen and Nikki continue their discussion through the book of Hebrews. They discuss Hebrews chapter 6—a difficult chapter for many Adventists, and the anchor of hope taught in these verses. Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Colleen: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: And I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: We’re so happy that you’ve joined us again for another episode of this podcast in which we are discussing the New Covenant through the lens of the Book of Hebrews. And I’m just going to say it again: If we don’t understand the details of Jesus’ identity, His ministry, the nature of His priesthood and His atonement, if we don’t really understand the depth of that, we can be easily led astray by subtle deceptions after we leave Adventism. Sometimes we think we understand the New Covenant and we have heard the gospel and we’re so excited that we’re no longer bound by the falsehoods of Adventism, and yet if we don’t continue to grow and ingest the meat of the word, the truth of who Jesus really is and what He’s really done, we can easily be deceived. And since I know that I can be deceived, I pray that the Lord will keep me planted in truth and reality, and I’m so thankful for people like the author of Hebrews, who took the time to go deeply into the nature of Jesus in a way that just is especially suited to those of us who came out of the legalism and the law focus of Adventism. So before we do that, I just want to say, if you want to write to us, if you have comments, questions, you can contact us at formeradventist@gmail.com. You can subscribe to Proclamation!, subscribe to the weekly email by going to proclamationmagazine.com, and you can follow the podcast on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to us wherever you listen to podcasts. But now we are going to look at Hebrews 6. Hebrews 6 used to be a sort of difficult chapter for me. Nikki, you were talking to me earlier about your own reaction to Hebrews 6. How did Hebrews 6 affect you through an Adventist lens?
Nikki: Well, I have to qualify that. I’m not sure that I read Hebrews as an Adventist. At least, I have no memory of really paying attention to it. But I can tell you that when I looked at it for the first time as a believer, while trying to shed my Adventist worldview, it was a very frustrating part of Scripture for me because I had read – it wasn’t one of the first epistles I’d read, so I had read enough to know that we can have security in the fact that we are saved and that that is eternal, and so when I bumped into this, trying to shed that anxiety about falling in and out, in and out of salvation, it was a struggle for me. Even recently it started to look different, as we prepared for this podcast.
Colleen: Because people listening might not have their Bibles open, and again I want to encourage you to follow along in Scripture if you have your Bible available, why don’t we just start by reading the first part of the chapter, the first eight verses, the part that my preconception of salvation and being able to lose salvation, all of that was so powerful in my head for so many years that I couldn’t read this portion of Scripture without feeling confused and frightened. So let’s just read those first eight verses, Nikki, and then let’s talk about what we’ve understood them to mean as we’ve done some comparative reading in the Old Testament and the verses that these have been connected to. Would you mind reading those first eight verses?
Nikki: “Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead work and of faith toward God, of instruction about washings and laying on of hands, and the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment. And this we will do, if God permits. For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame. For ground that drinks the rain which often falls on it and brings forth vegetation useful to those for whose sake it is also tilled, receives a blessing from God; but if it yields thorns and thistles, it is worthless and close to being cursed, and it ends up being burned.”
Colleen: So this is one of the famous warnings in Hebrews, and we have to ask ourselves: Who is he addressing with this warning? People who are born again, everybody who has professed faith in God, people who say they know Jesus? Who is being warned here? And it’s probably important to just remember the very end of Hebrews 5. The author has set it up so that he’s explaining that it’s time for his readers to eat the meat of the word and not just drink the milk. They have to dig deep; they have to know the truth about Jesus. So he starts with – because of that, he starts chapter 6 with the word “therefore.” In other words, we’re now moving into understanding the meat so that we will know who Jesus is and be so protected against being deceived. Nikki, what did you think as you were thinking through this for the podcast, about those first three verses?
Nikki: I think that I used to just sort of fly past them when I read them because I was so anxious about getting to that part about falling away. He said at the end of chapter 5 that everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness. These aren’t people who are spending a lot of time in God’s word understanding what they’ve come to, and so he says, “Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity.” And then he interrupts himself, “not laying again a foundation of,” and he lists off these various things that these people already know, they’ve already been exposed to, they’ve lived this in the church, and he says, “And this we will do” – “this” being the pressing on to maturity – “if God permits,” and you know, I used to read that, “if God permits,” I used to read right past that. I thought that it was about time, you know, like “Lord willing we’re going to go to the beach this summer,” I don’t know. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] If the Lord wills it.
Nikki: Yeah. “If God permits” is connected to pressing on to maturity. I see this as the preservation of the saints. “If the Lord permits, we’re going to press on.”
Colleen: He’s not so much saying, “If the Lord permits, I will teach you these deep truths.” He’s really saying, “Let’s press on to maturity, if the Lord permits.” So he’s actually acknowledging that there are some people who will mature and some people who won’t, and that is because God knows His own, He calls His own, and some people just refuse to grow. “If the Lord permits” is in reference to those who will grow on to maturity. So what about, then, if God permits? He goes on then in verse 4 to say, “For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, have tasted the good word of God, the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away.” So, Nikki, talk to me about your reaction to that.
Nikki: Okay. Well, I used to think that he was changing the subject in verse 4. It was like, whoa, why are we suddenly talking about that? When I looked really closely at 1 through 3, I realized he’s essentially summarizing what he’s already said about them. He’s saying, “Let us not lay again a foundation of.” And then if you look at repentance from works and of faith toward God, that’s the gospel. The instruction about washing and laying on of hands, the cross-references there are about commissioning people into ministry and about baptisms and various things, and so he’s listed off all of these things that these people knew, they understood, they already knew, they were partakers of this, and so that’s why he said, “We’re going to push past it if God permits, for in the case of those who have once been enlightened” – I want to insert in here, “like you guys have” –
Colleen: Yes, that’s exactly what he’s saying.
Nikki: Yeah. And then they fall away, then it’s impossible to renew them again to repentance. So what I see here when I look at these verses, following right after the previous ones, there’s absolutely no interruption. This is very linear. He’s saying almost like, “You guys are kind of set up here. This is a fork in the road. Are you going to press on to maturity? You know what you need to know. What are you going to do with it now?”
Colleen: So in other words, he’s saying to these people whom he’s writing to, in a church of believing Jews, “If you’ve been enlightened, as you have been, you’ve learned the elementary principles of Christ, you’ve had the Old Testament shadows of Him, you’ve heard the teachings of Him, and if you’ve tasted the Holy Spirit” – and it’s interesting because he doesn’t say “been indwelt by,” he’s saying tasted. People can experience the Holy Spirit in many different ways, as Judas did, who lived before the Holy Spirit was poured out, but he didn’t believe in Jesus, yet he was an apostle, and he went out with them to the cities of Judea, doing miracles in the name of Jesus, kingdom miracles, using the power of the Holy Spirit to raise people from the dead and to cast out demons, yet he did not believe. Judas is an example of a person who had tasted the Holy Spirit, who had tasted the heavenly gift. So this man is now saying to this church, “If you’ve experienced the power of the gospel, if you’ve tasted these things, and you fall away, if you decide that ultimately it’s not worth all the energy of your life to commit your whole self to the Lord, there’s no repentance left because you know what you’re walking away from.”
Nikki: That was really kind of brand new to me this time, reading it. And in our talking about it, I keep going back to verse 3, “And this we will do if God permits,” because I was so excited when I saw that “if God permits” is connected to “let us press on to maturity.” I saw where this verse used to make me feel like, oh, I could fall away, what if I fall away? And then if I do, I can’t come back. It felt like my understanding of grieving the Holy Spirit when I was an Adventist. You know, if I make Him mad enough He’s gone forever.
Colleen: Oh, yes.
Nikki: And I had that connected with the unpardonable sin. That was a big mess in my head. And so this would kind of bring that stuff up for me. But seeing here, this lines right up with what the rest of Scripture has made clear to me. The perseverance of the saints is really the preservation of the saints. God permits us to mature in the faith, and that’s the only reason we mature in the faith. That lined up with my understanding that I am kept by God’s power, according to 1 Peter 1:3-5.
Colleen: That’s so powerful and such a relief to me. I don’t have to keep myself saved. I don’t have to worry that I’m falling out of salvation. The Lord keeps me. And people like Judas, people like the Pharisees, who looked right at Jesus, told Him He was casting out demons by the power of Beelzebub, they knew He was working by the power of God. They knew who He was, and they refused to believe. I don’t have to worry that I will accidentally refuse to believe because I do believe, and the Lord has promised to keep me. People who fall away have never truly committed themselves and been born again.
Nikki: So then when I read verses 7 and 8, it reminded me of a couple different things. It reminded me of the parable of the soils, which has been so helpful to me in understanding the security of the believer, and it also reminded me of how our works are going to be tested. Can you talk a little bit about those two verses?
Colleen: It’s interesting to me that the writer in verse 7 brings up the idea of ground that drinks the rain which often falls on it and brings forth vegetation useful to those for whose sake it is also tilled and receives a blessing from God. It reminds me of Jesus’ parable of the soils. The parable of the soils, I think all of us will remember it. There were four soils, and the seed fell on the soils. There is the hard ground, and the seed fell on the hard ground, and it did not develop roots, it did not germinate, and the birds ate the seed, and it was as if nothing had ever happened. Then there was rocky soil, where there was a thin layer of soil over a lot of rocks. Seed did fall on that, and it did germinate. It grew up little plants. But when the heat became intense, those plants had no deep roots because the soil had been rocky, and those plants withered and died without maturing, without growing, and without bearing fruit. Then there was the weedy soil with lots of things growing in it, and the seed fell on the weedy soil, and a few of those seeds did germinate and sent up little plants, but they were always in competition for nourishment from all those weeds that were already in the soil, and ultimately they were choked to death because they were not fed and not nourished, and they didn’t grow up. And then there was the good soil, which received the seed gladly, put down deep roots, and bore a huge crop. And Jesus explained that the soils represent different kinds of human hearts, the hard kind that absolutely will not listen to the gospel; the rocky soil, which does hear the gospel, a person who does hear the gospel and finds himself drawn to it and even springs up a little gospel plant, oh, liking the idea of the gospel. And the weedy soil similarly. This sounds like hope. The person with lots of worldly cares, lots of financial concerns, lots of worries, and the gospel sounds like a relief. So the gospel seeds will germinate in that soil too, but in both of those soils there is not the potential for maturity. In the rocky soil, the person does not allow that plant to send down deep roots. It’s not fully committed to nothing but the gospel, and that plant withers and dies because it is not nourished. When the heat’s on, the person bails and the plant dies. The weedy soil is a person who’s too concerned with the cares of the world, and they never nourish the gospel. The other things in their life get far more attention, and the plant never matures. And the good soil, of course, is the human heart that loves the gospel, and it puts down deep roots, and it bears much fruit. And here this author is bringing up that soil metaphor again. So in every church there are true believers who were born again, there are people who are attracted to the gospel but may be bad soils, but may be showing signs of a gospel plant. And those people, I believe, are part of this audience that’s being warned. It’s like, think carefully. You’ve heard the gospel, you’ve been enlightened. Let that plant put down roots. Let that plant take over the concerns and the cares in your life. Nourish it. Give it the full benefit of your attention and your immersion in the word of God. Nurture that plant. And then at the end he says, “But soil, if it doesn’t yield good fruit, but yields thorns and thistles, it’s worthless and close to being cursed, and in the end it is burned up.” And it’s interesting, because here again he is saying that the soil that does not bear good fruit itself, the soil, will be burned up. And we also know that Paul warns us in 1 Corinthians 3 that even believers can spend a lot of their believing life building on the foundation of Christ with wood, hay, and stubble, and those works, which are not eternal works of God, built on the foundation of Christ, will be burned up, even though that believer may be saved, though as through flames. In essence, in this first part of the chapter, this author is warning this church that if there is any bad soil who’s not allowing the gospel to be nourished, think again. Give it all of your attention. Immerse yourself in the depths of God’s word. And if there are any believers who have become casual, who have not been paying attention to God’s word, who are distracted by life, or who are doing their own kind of work instead of allowing the Lord to bring His work to them, pay attention to God’s word and mature. Allow the Lord to bring you to maturity.
Nikki: And I would love to add too that this is not just about being at the right church. I’ve heard people say, “Oh, I’ve left Adventism. I go to a good church.” This is more than that because the ground in 7 and 8 is receiving the same rain. The ground is drinking the rain. One is producing vegetation that’s useful and the other one is producing thorns and thistles. This echoes to me Hebrews 4:11: “Therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest, so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience.” That disobedience was unbelief. And so the call, it’s about belief, it’s about making use of that same rain to produce vegetation that is useful, through faith, through belief in what Christ has done.
Colleen: So, Nikki, would you read verses 9 through 12 for us, please.
Nikki: “But, beloved, we are convinced of better things concerning you, and things that accompany salvation, though we are speaking in this way. For God is not unjust so as to forget your work and the love which you have shown toward His name, in having ministered and in still ministering to the saints. And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you will not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.”
Colleen: It’s interesting that here, right after he does the warning, calling people to be sure that they’re putting down deep roots, drinking in the rain of the Lord’s blessing and teaching, he’s saying, but we really believe that you’re saved, and we want to see the fruit of your salvation, and we want you to show the same diligence to realize the full assurance of hope until the end. He’s basically saying, we want you to eat the meat of the word, we want you to know the deep things of God, that is why the Lord has revealed it. Don’t neglect what He’s already given you, and I’m going to remind you of what those things are as we go on in this letter.
Nikki: I love that he says that they can realize the full assurance of the hope they have until the end. This section that I thought was a difficult one for the security of the believer is really only shoring up what the rest of Scripture teaches. There is full assurance for those who are born again.
Colleen: Isn’t that wonderful? It’s such a paradigm shift.
Nikki: Yeah. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] You know, I have to say there’s another little paradigm shift in here too. It’s in verse 12, where he says, “So that you will not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” I just want to say as an Adventist I was taught, “Oh, you don’t look to men. You never imitate men. You imitate Christ.” I mean, I was actually taught that imitating Christ was the way I was worthy of salvation. I was not taught that believing in Christ was the way I was worthy of salvation and that imitating Christ is something that He works out in me if I believe. It’s not what I do to be counted worthy. And even beyond that, I remember how surprised I was as a Christian when I started reading the New Testament and saw how often believers are commanded to imitate those who live lives of faith, imitate good leaders, imitate the saints. And I realized that as an Adventist we were surrounded by pastors, teachers that we knew were sinning.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: They were doing financial scams, there was abuse, there was marital infidelity, there were all kinds of moral failures around us. I mean, did you notice that as an Adventist, Nikki?
Nikki: Oh, definitely. And if you brought it up, people would always say, “Look to God, not to the people.” There was absolutely no fruit inspection in Adventism because every time you pointed out bad fruit, it was, “Oh, well, we just look to God, we don’t look to the people.”
Colleen: I was made to feel that I was not to notice if my leaders were doing dishonest things. “God will take care of them. We’re in the true church, we have the truth, just look to Jesus.” And essentially close your eyes to the abuses that are going on, even if they’re being done to you.
Nikki: And I think that that’s what I understood grace to be. I wouldn’t have used the word “grace,” but that was like, that was forgiveness. That was being, you know, don’t throw the first stone. Look at God, don’t look at the people. It was all connected, to me.
Colleen: And there was no accountability. There was very little accountability. So if somebody was caught in a heinous crime or a terrible moral failure, if it was not widely known, the person could get away with it.
Nikki: Yeah, I know people who were moved to different conferences. Um-hmm.
Colleen: Both pastors and teachers.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: They were not disciplined, they were not removed from their jobs for abuses that should have resulted in job cessation, but they were moved and continued their behaviors. So when it says, “So that you may be imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises,” this is a whole new world. This is the world of being in Christ, and those that the Lord puts in our lives who know Him are given to us as examples of faith. They are meant to build our faith, they are meant to build our trust in Jesus by that daily exhortation that we read about in a couple chapters back. Encourage one another so you’re not deceived by sin.
Nikki: And it requires us to be discerning, it requires us to practice discerning good and evil in order to know who those are who are living in faith.
Colleen: When you’re born again, the Holy Spirit, who indwells us, recognizes the Holy Spirit in another brother or sister, and the Lord, in His mercy, puts us into each other’s lives as local members of His body. It’s a remarkable thing that I had no way to understand before being born again, but the Lord gives me brothers and sisters in Him to encourage my faith and to give me examples to show me how it’s possible to live along obedience in the same direction, to borrow a phrase. So, Nikki, would you like to read 13 through 20, please.
Nikki: Okay. “For when God made the promise to Abraham, since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself, saying, ‘I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply you.’ And so, having patiently waited, he obtained the promise. For men swear by one greater than themselves, and with them an oath given as confirmation is an end of every dispute. In the same way God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil, where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”
Colleen: This passage was hard for me. But when I started to look closely at the references that the author is referring to, it’s so amazing. It’s so exciting. Do you have any reactions to like the first part about the oath and the promise? Is there anything that you thought as you read that, Nikki?
Nikki: Well, you know, that used to confuse me. I remember thinking that this guy kept changing the subject. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] Yeah.
Nikki: I couldn’t keep up. But, you know, I love this. I love that as we’re talking about the Old and New Covenant in this series, I love how often the writer of Hebrews takes us back to Abraham –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – and shows us how all of this work of God was foreshadowed.
Colleen: He takes us to Abraham and what God promised to Abraham in His unconditional covenant with Abraham. And he works out how we see that being fulfilled in the New Covenant. I want to start by looking at verses 13 through 15. It’s interesting to me what he says about Abraham here. He reminds us that God made a promise to Abraham, and then he says, “Since He [God] could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself, saying, ‘I will surely bless you and surely multiply you.’ And so, having patiently waited, he [Abraham] obtained the promise.” Now, we’ve gone in detail over the Abrahamic covenant and how it was an unconditional covenant where God put Abraham to sleep and God promised him seed, land, and blessing and walked through the sacrificial animals while Abraham slept so Abraham couldn’t participate in the covenant. It was God alone promising. But now it says that God swore by Himself, that He made a promise and He swore. He even goes on to say, down in verse 18, that God did two unchangeable things in which it was impossible for Him to lie. Those two unchangeable things were His promise and His swearing by Himself. So in order to understand the swearing, I looked up the reference, and it took me back to Genesis 22. In Genesis 15 we had the story of the covenant being made, but in Genesis 22 it’s a different part of Abraham’s life. Nikki, do you have that?
Nikki: I do.
Colleen: Genesis 22:15-18.
Nikki: “Then the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven, and said, ‘By myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this thing and have not withheld your son, your only son, indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies. In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.'”
Colleen: Now, this is really quite amazing. This is the sacrifice of Isaac. This is not the place where God made the initial promise to Abraham. Years before, years before Isaac was even born, God made that unconditional promise. This is years later, as a young man, when Isaac goes up the hill with Abraham and doesn’t fully understand what’s going to happen. And you remember the story. He says, “We have the fuel, we have the fire, but where is the lamb?” And Abraham said, “The Lord will provide.” And you all remember the story. He tied Isaac to the altar. He raised his knife. He was ready to slay him. And we learn in Hebrews 11 that Abraham believed that God could even raise Isaac from the dead because he knew this was the son of promise, and the Lord held his hand by the hand of an angel and provided a ram in the bushes. This is the story the author of Hebrews takes us to, to see when God swore by Himself. So at the very beginning of the covenant, God made a promise which cannot be broken, and now, as Abraham and Isaac do this really unusual act of obedience to God, God swears by Himself that He will fulfill the covenant that He made of seed, land, and blessing. He renews the covenant again right here. You want to say, what’s so significant about what happened there? I’ve heard Adventists describe that as an example of a dysfunctional family, Abraham acting as a dysfunctional father, not telling Sarah, risking the life of their child, what were they thinking? No, this was something really important. What does it represent?
Nikki: This represents what God did in sending His Son to die for us. This is a type of Christ. Like you said before we started the podcast, I had never even thought about this, but this is a picture of the relationship between the Father and the Son, where they didn’t have a concept at that point of the Father and the Son. They didn’t understand the Trinity.
Colleen: But this is a picture that God ordained – He asked Abraham to carry it out – of representing the Father sending the Son and the Father providing a sacrifice for human sin. It’s an amazing thing. Not all the details are explained here, but it is so significant that God swears by Himself, because there’s no one higher by whom He can swear. God is the ultimate authority that exists anywhere, and He can’t say, “Well, I swear by the temple” or “I swear on my mother’s grave.” He swears by Himself, “I will do this,” and He renews even the promise of the land, saying “Your offspring will possess the gates of their enemies.” The whole thing is acted out here, and God does two things: He promises, He swears. Neither one can be broken. It’s like what God says will happen, and we don’t ever have to wonder if His word will come true.
Nikki: And I love how the author says that, you know, men swear by one greater than themselves and give an oath, and this is the end of every dispute. It’s done, it’s sealed, and this is if a man gives an oath, but now we have God. And God has given an oath. That’s an end of the dispute. This is assurance.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: This is talking about he’s hoping they would realize the full assurance of the hope they have until the end. This is why we have that assurance: It’s God’s oath.
Colleen: And he’s specifically tying in God’s oath and promise to Abraham in the Abrahamic covenant, and he’s saying this is your inheritance. This is what I am doing for you and promising for you. This is what I promised Abrahamwould be true for you. And he takes us to those last two verses of this chapter and describes what our sure inheritance is. What is it?
Nikki: It’s our hope. We have this hope as an anchor of the soul.
Colleen: And that hope is?
Nikki: It’s Jesus. It’s our salvation.
Colleen: Yeah. And He’s entered into the Most Holy Place within the veil. This is our hope that is our anchor. Jesus has already entered the presence of God. Now, when was the Book of Hebrews written? Prior to AD 70, because the temple was still standing. The author makes no mention of the temple being eradicated at this point. He’s still describing how the temple was fulfilled in Jesus. So it was a very early book. The author is already writing in the past tense. Our hope of Jesus being within the veil is already a past tense done deal when he wrote this book. How can this possibly not utterly crush the Adventist paradigm.
Nikki: What do they do with these verses? Have you ever heard them talk about them?
Colleen: Ah, briefly, but I’ve never heard it explained. They will say, “Jesus entered heaven.”
Nikki: Okay.
Colleen: They won’t deal with the “within the veil.” They won’t deal with the Most Holy Place. I’ve never heard this explained.
Nikki: Um-um.
Colleen: Like I said, Hebrews used to confuse me terribly. Large portions of the book were badly explained, poorly applied, or ignored altogether. And this is one of those places that I don’t remember ever hearing well explained. But it says Jesus went within the veil. He went into the very presence of God, and we know from what happened when Jesus died that on earth in the tabernacle, that veil was torn. There was nothing standing between the presence of God and sinful humanity because of the blood of Jesus. 1844 is such a blasphemy. Jesus did not enter the Holy Place in 1844. He entered the Holy Place when He rose from death and ascended to heaven. His blood was sufficient. That’s why He rose from death, and when He ascended and sat down at the right hand of the Father, there’s no more veil hopping, no moving back and forth between compartments. It was done. And this is our hope. This is our anchor. Nikki, you were talking to me before we did the podcast of some things you remembered our pastor, Gary, saying about an anchor. Do you want to talk about that? It is such a great picture.
Nikki: Yeah. So I remember him talking about this passage, and he described the purpose of an anchor, and he was talking about the purpose of an anchor back in the time that this letter was written. I couldn’t remember exactly how he worded it, so I was talking to Carel and asked him to kind of remind me. It was very impacting. He said that an anchor has two uses. One is to hold you in a position. Back then, the anchor was also used to pull ships to shore when the shallows were rocky and dangerous. Somebody would bring the anchor up to the shore, and the boat would be pulled in. And so we have a picture here of Jesus being the anchor of our soul who enters within the veil as a forerunner, and so He’s behind the veil, and He is pulling us home. He is bringing us home. That’s a different kind of high priestly work than what I thought He was doing up there. I thought He was judging us. I thought He had His nose in the books, and He was evaluating every foul thing and thought that we did. But here we see that He entered as a forerunner, as an anchor, and that He is bringing us home, that He – as we see in verse 19, He is sure and steadfast. There’s my hope. There’s my security.
Colleen: It’s such an interesting metaphor too because when we think of anchors, we think of ships on the tumultuous, movable water, and an anchor secures the boat, either in the dirt, if it’s shallow enough water, or in the very deep waters, where it’s more stable. An anchor, from our perspective on earth, generally is anchoring a movable boat to the solid earth. But this is the complete opposite. We are not being anchored to earth. We are anchored to God. And Jesus is our anchor, and He’s, like you said, pulling us home. In a different kind of priesthood, according to the order of Melchizedek, not according to the order of Aaron. And like you said before, Nikki, He is not up there wearing a Urim and a Thummim, and He’s not wearing a linen ephod, and He’s not wearing the high priestly garments of the Old Testament, as all of our children’s books pictured Him.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: No matter what they said, Adventism did teach us that Jesus was functioning as a Levitical high priest, and Hebrews could not be more clear, He is not according to the order of Aaron. His work is completely different. His work is finished, and He’s bringing us home.
Nikki: That’s really exciting. [Laughter.]
Colleen: I know! It does make me excited. [Laughter.]
Nikki: This chapter is all about security. It’s in every section –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – of this chapter, and I never saw that before. It’s just so exciting. No matter how many times I’ve read this as a believer, I still see new things all the time.
Colleen: I’ve been amazed by that as we’ve been doing these podcasts on Hebrews. This is so rich. It just makes me want to cry, actually. It’s so deep, so rich, and so filled with hope. And if you do not know that hope, if you are not sure you’ve trusted Jesus, I just ask you to do that now. The Holy Spirit, who seals us with His unleaving presence when we trust and believe in Jesus’ finished work, gives us the assurance that we are God’s children and that we can call Him Abba. We want nothing more than for each of you who hear these podcasts to know Jesus and to be able to call Him Abba and to know that Jesus is bringing you home. So if you have comments or questions, don’t forget to write us at formeradventist@gmail.com. You may sign up for the weekly email, for Proclamation! magazine at proclamationmagazine.com. Listen to us wherever you listen to podcasts, write us a review, give us a rating. Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and we thank you for hanging in there with us again through another chapter of Hebrews as we explore the true nature of the New Covenant and what God has done for us in Jesus. We’re so glad you’re on this journey with us.
Nikki: Bye for now.
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