S16 || A Trust That Never Lies || Hebrews 6:19 - 7:3 || Session 16

Lies travel fast, but they don’t last. We end Hebrews chapter 6 and open chapter 7 finding a sturdier place to stand: God’s promise to Abraham, sealed by an oath, and a hope described as an anchor for the soul. From that foundation, we follow the thread behind the veil into the true tabernacle, where Jesus acts not as our forerunner and high priest who secures our access to the presence of God.

We unpack how an ancient sanctuary layout—outer court, holy place, Holy of Holies—mirrors a heavenly reality, and why that matters for everyday assurance. If Jesus Christ [Messiah] carries His own blood into the real Holy of Holies, then atonement is not a metaphor; it is the substance the Old Testament symbols pointed to. Along the way, we meet Melchizedek, the mysterious king of Salem, whose sudden appearance with bread and wine, blessing, and tithe becomes a powerful type of Christ: king of righteousness, king of peace, and priest of God Most High. The absence of his genealogy in Genesis isn’t a puzzle to solve as much as a signpost toward an eternal priesthood fulfilled in Jesus.

This conversation stays grounded with a vivid nautical image of a “forerunner” boat that carries the big ship’s anchor over the sandbar into safe holding. That’s how our hope holds when life’s tides pull us backward: not because we are strong, but because our anchor is set in God’s unchangeable character. If you’ve felt the drag of doubt or the sting of broken promises, this is a warm, thoughtful guide to a trust that doesn’t crack under pressure.

If this helped steady your faith, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs firm footing, and leave a quick review to help others find it.

Chapters

• 0:20 A World Of Lies Vs. God’s Truth
• 0:54 Hebrews 6 And God’s Unbreakable Oath
• 2:06 Hope As The Anchor Of The Soul
• 7:18 Behind The Veil And The True Tabernacle
• 10:31 Jesus Our Forerunner And High Priest
• 12:11 The Nautical Forerunner And Anchor Picture
• 13:12 Enter Melchizedek: King And Priest
• 16:45 Bread, Wine, And Peace That Points To Christ
• 18:12 No Genealogy: A Type Of The Eternal Son
• 27:00 Closing And Preview Of Chapter Seven

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:20

We live in a world that's full of lies. There's a lot of falsehoods in the world. The attorneys of the world make a good living by making very long, very detailed contracts in order to hold people to their word. If we look around the world, we see a lot of falsehoods and we see a lot of lies. Oftentimes the lies sometimes come from us because we're lying to ourselves about our own sin. Today we're gonna learn about somebody that's very, very trustworthy and will never lie. That is the Lord God. Hi, my name's Glenn. I'm here with Steve. We are reasoning through the Bible. If you have your copy of the Word of God, open it to Hebrews chapter 6. As we've been learning, then we have a God here who is very trustworthy. He made promises to Abraham. The promises are valid enough that we can trust him for our salvation. We've also been learning about the person of the Lord Jesus and how he is better than the angels, he is better than Moses, and we're gonna see that he is a better priest. To pick up where we left off last time, Hebrews 6.18 says this: 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. Here in verse 18, by two unchangeable things it says, the two things, of course, are that God made a promise to Abraham that he would have a great nation that would come from him, and that through him all the nations of the earth would be blessed, and that the land promise would be forever. He made that promise, but then he also followed it up with an oath. Genesis 22, 16, God says, quote, By myself I have sworn. He not only made the promise to Abraham, but he said, By myself I have sworn. We know here that it is impossible for God to lie. Steve, is it reassuring to us that we can have something solid that, namely God that we know will not lie to us?

SPEAKER_00: 2:57

Isn't it a foundation of everything that we really trust in? To know that God's oath is solemn and that because he can't lie, that we can trust the oath and we can trust the promise. Yeah, it's very comforting to know that we have that type of a God and that the bedrock of our foundation is on that type of a God that cannot lie.

SPEAKER_01: 3:23

And of course, the context here is explaining some high theology, namely, that God made this promise, this covenant with Abraham, and he swore by himself to keep it. The Abrahamic covenant is based on God's promise. That's what Hebrews is making. It's not dependent on anyone's obedience. God makes this crystal clear in Genesis 15, verses 12 through 21, and Genesis 17, the first nine verses. The Abrahamic covenant of which our salvation depends is based on God's promise, not on anyone's obedience or anyone's ability to keep a promise. That's true of Abraham, it's true of Isaac, Jacob, and it's true of you, and it's true of me. God promised salvation in Jesus Christ, and all we have to do is trust him. He's the one that's faithful. We are the ones who has the weak faith. That's why we have to go back to him and trust him. But he is trustworthy. Verse 18, it is impossible for God to lie. We can take that and we can apply it to our lives today in the sense that our sin and our inner motivations, he's going to tell us the truth. He's going to tell us the truth in the Bible about the human condition. Isn't it comforting to know that God will not lie to us? The world will lie to us. The world will look us in the eye and smile and lie through their teeth. There is not an honest person in the world except for God. He is the one who is faithful. Now, Steve, why is it that we can trust God?

SPEAKER_00: 5:06

Well, because it says here that he's unchangeable. And because he's unchangeable whenever he makes such a covenant with someone, and especially the one that he's made with Abraham, because he is the one that is making the covenant, it's an unconditional one, then we can trust everything that he's gonna say. When we see a rainbow in the sky, do we believe that God is not gonna destroy the earth in a flood like he did before? Yes, we can, because that's the promise that he has made to us. Anything that God gives to us, as the writer of Hebrews is talking about here, he's giving some of his characteristics. He's unchangeable. He has sworn this oath by himself because there's no one that is higher than him. It's very comforting to know that that's the type of God that we worship.

SPEAKER_01: 6:00

We can trust God because it is impossible for him to lie. His nature is truth. Jesus said, I am the truth. Therefore, his nature is true, therefore, it is impossible for him to lie. And we can take comfort in that. In verse 19, it says, This hope we have set as an anchor for the soul. A ship without an anchor will drift away, will blow away, just like it warned us about back in Hebrews chapter 2. It warned us about drifting away. Well, we're not going to drift away if we have a solid anchor that's attached to the bedrock. That's what we need to keep from drifting away. Why keep drifting through life and blowing with every wind when you could have an anchor secured into bedrock? We can be assured of this hope, not because of us. We on our own will drift away, but he is the anchor that is latched into the bedrock and will keep us from drifting away. Then in verses 19 and 20, it introduces an idea that he's going to talk about a great deal more in the next chapter 7. At the end of verse 19, what does it mean there when it says, Enters behind the veil?

SPEAKER_00: 7:18

This is a reference to the tabernacle and later the temple, as God set aside for Moses how to build this tabernacle where the people would worship God and the ordinances that He gave them. There was an outer court from where this tabernacle was. And then inside the tabernacle, there were two parts of it. The first part that you went into was called the holy place. That's where the table of showbread was, the lampstand, and the altar of incense. And then there was a veil. And then behind the veil, there was another small room that was called the Holy of Holies. And within that was where the Ark of the Covenant was. The high priest was the only one that could go into that holy of holies behind the veil. He only did it once a year, whenever he was making a yearly atonement for the people of Israel.

SPEAKER_01: 8:17

The tabernacle, as you rightly pointed out, and later the same design was in the temple, the building. That pattern Moses got at Mount Sinai when he went up on the mountain and he got the Ten Commandments, but he didn't get just the Ten Commandments. He also got all the other laws, and he got the pattern for the tabernacle with all of the implements and the rooms and everything that should be laid out there. The pattern, it says in that passage that God was showing him a pattern that was in heaven. There is a tabernacle on earth that Moses built, but that one was after the pattern that God showed to Moses when he was on Mount Sinai. Where was the pattern? It was in heaven. There is a real tabernacle, the real temple made according to the exact same design in heaven. God showed it to Moses in order to build the one on earth. And it tells us this that there's a real tabernacle in heaven. We're going to get to it in Hebrews 8:5. When it says here in this passage, enters behind the veil, it's talking about when Jesus died as high priest, I believe he took his own blood behind the veil in the real temple in heaven, just like the high priest was commanded to do in the earthly tabernacle in the Holy of Holies. This is a very profound concept that there is an actual true tabernacle in heaven that, again, I believe Jesus took his own blood into, because right here it's talking about that he entered as a forerunner for us and that he entered behind the veil. He was high priest, and he entered into the real tabernacle to pay the price on the Day of Atonement. And so that's a great, great concept of which most of the next chapter is going to expand upon. It also introduces this idea in verse 20 of Jesus entering as a forerunner for us. In one sense, Jesus went before us as our representative. If you were with us before, our denominations tend to get the idea of a priest all messed up. We think of a priest as somebody who comes down from God. Nothing could be further from the truth. The priest was a regular man that went and represented the people to God. Jesus had to be a man in order to be our high priest. He went in as a forerunner to represent us before God because he was human. A high priest represented the whole nation before God. In another sense, Jesus went as a forerunner for those who are to follow. All followers of Christ can expect big things in heaven. I think we will have the right and the privilege, as it's going to explain to us, to go into the very throne room of God. Our high priest is in there constantly making intercession for us, but we were going to have the privilege of being able to go and see God behind the veil. How wonderful this is. Again, you just lose words being able to anticipate such a great concept. One evidence I have that the Bible is true is that these Old Testament teachings that were in all of these Old Testament passages align perfectly with Christ and his ministry here in the New Testament.

SPEAKER_00: 11:54

One of the things I came across in studying these verses, Glenn, in preparation, was that this term forerunner was sometimes used as a nautical term. It goes a little bit with the previous verse 19 when he talks about the hope that we have as an anchor. What would happen is that some of these ships and the harbors would have sandbars. And as the tide went out, the larger ships wouldn't be able to cross the sandbars to get into the harbor, yet they didn't want to have to anchor out too deep away from the harbor. They would send a smaller ship with a lesser draft to go in and take the anchor on the other side of the sandbar and anchor that. They'd call that the forerunner to go in, place the anchor on the other side of the sandbar. As the tide went out, it would hold the ship from going out too far and close to the harbor. Then when the tide came back in and the larger ship was able to get over the sandbar, they would weigh the anchor and move on into the harbor. That's just one example we have here where it's just a picture of an anchor of our hope, is something in where Jesus is our forerunner. He has gone in before us and put that anchor down of the hope that we have.

SPEAKER_01: 13:12

That brings us to Hebrews chapter 7. We're still up on the mountaintop here, breathing rarefied air. It's going to be even more of a heady experience because we're going to learn about Melchizedek and Abraham. Before we get into it, Steve, who is this guy, Melchizedek, and where is he first introduced?

SPEAKER_00: 13:33

We first see Melchizedek in Genesis chapter 14, I think it is. The story is that Lot has been taken off and kidnapped. He is not living where Abraham is. He's living in a different place. And some other kings band together, and Lot is taken off. The news gets back to Abraham. Abraham brings his men together and goes and chases these kings in the northern part of the land that they've taken Lot. And he has a battle with them, several battles, and he rescues Lot and he defeats these other kings and takes the booty from them and is coming back to the area where Abraham lives with Lot and all of his livestock, and then the booty also from these other kings. As they pass through this city of Salem, which we know as Jerusalem, as it eventually becomes, there is this person that comes out who is said to be the king of Salem, and that he's also a priest of the God most high. And he greets Abraham. In that exchange, Abraham ends up giving him Melchizedek a tenth of all the spoils, the best part of the spoils, to him as a tithe to this king and priest of Salem. That's the first place and first time that we hear about this person by the name of Melchizedek.

SPEAKER_01: 15:05

And Melchizedek here in Hebrews is a major theme, as we're going to see in this chapter seven. But the actual story, what you just said, Steve, is really this very short story in Genesis 14. Just like you said, some evil kings had come and taken Lot and his wives and his family and his servants and all of their possessions and had taken them away. Abraham goes with all of his men, kills the evil kings, and gets all of the booty back and all the people. And on the way back, I'm going to go ahead and read. There's really just three verses here. This man Melchizedek just pops onto the scene, and this is all it says. I'm going to read here in Genesis 14, 18 says this Melchizedek, the king of Salem, brought out bread and wine. Now he was a priest of God most high, and he blessed him and said, Blessed be Abram of God most high, possessor of heaven and earth, and blessed be God most high, who has handed over your enemies to you. That's really all it's saying here about this guy. There's just this two or three little verses. Abraham gives him a tenth of the spoils, and then the story just keeps moving on. With that background, we now have the story over here in Hebrews chapter seven that picks up assuming that we know all of that. Now the name of Melchizedek is quite interesting because it says he is king of Salem. Well, Salem in Hebrew is the word shalom that just means peace. This Melchizedek is king, king of peace.

SPEAKER_00: 16:51

Steve, where do we get true peace? We get that peace through rest in Jesus Christ. Put our belief and trust and hope in him. Whenever the angels came and visited the shepherds in the field to announce the birth of King Jesus, one of the things they said is peace on earth. And some people have taken that to mean that Jesus was to bring peace amongst fellow men on earth. What it really means is that Jesus came and brings peace between mankind and God. That's the peace that he brought. That's the peace that we can have whenever we place our trust and faith in him.

SPEAKER_01: 17:33

The writer of Hebrews is going back into Genesis and finding this small story about Melchizedek, and he's saying that this is a type or a picture of Christ. We can already see the great parallels. Melchizedek is the king of Salem, which is king of peace. He brought bread and wine. Who does that remind you of? The priest of God most high. He gives a blessing to Abraham. Abraham gives him a tenth of all the spoils in the battle. We can already see these parallels. Steve, can you read the first three verses of Hebrews chapter seven?

SPEAKER_00: 18:12

For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the most high God, who met Abraham as he was returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him, to whom also Abraham apportioned a tenth part of all the spoils, was first of all, by the translation of his name, King of righteousness, and then also King of Salem, which is King of Peace, without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, he remains a priest perpetually.

SPEAKER_01: 18:52

With this, we're already hitting the deep water here, but the first sentence, and really just the first phrase, it explains some great concepts. For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God. Steve, what did the Mosaic law say about who could be a king and who could be a priest?

SPEAKER_00: 19:12

Well, the priests were to come from the tribe of Levi or Levi. That was the same tribe that Moses and Aaron was from. The high priests themselves were to be direct descendants of Aaron. This is where the lineage of the priests were to come from. But this story here is coming along way before any of those types of ordinances were set aside by God in the Mosaic Law.

SPEAKER_01: 19:38

That's exactly right. The readers of the book of Hebrews would have been very familiar with the Mosaic Law. And in that, the line of the kings could not be priests, and the priests could not be kings. There was a separate tribe that God had set up. As you rightly pointed out, this story of Melchizedek was way, way many years prior to the The Mosaic Law. He's reminding the audience here of a very different type of priest. There were also priests of other religions that they would have been familiar with, but Melchizedek was priest of the most high God. He's very specifically saying this was a good priest. It was a true priest, but he was a priest and a king. That should be raising people's antenna already. It would raise the attention of the readers here of Hebrews. Note this was many years prior to the Mosaic Law, and he was both king and priest. Then he gives a blessing. Melchizedek in the passage gave a blessing to Abraham. Melchizedek simply arrives with this blessing and then leaves. He's not heard from in the account in Genesis before or after. Melchizedek suddenly comes on the scene and then he's gone. There's no explanation given as to where he came from or where he went. In the story, if you remember, Abraham has just defeated an army and taken this great amount of money and spoils, and he's returning with all these people, his nephew Lot and all the wife and the servant, and everything. In Genesis 14, 21, the king of Sodom gives Abraham an evil, sinful proposal. Give me the people, and Abraham, you can keep the money. So he's basically buying these people as slaves and trying to buy off Abraham for money. Abraham could have sold the people and become quite rich. Melchizedek shows up at just the right time and encourages Abraham. He brings a blessing for Abraham. Right at the time of when Abraham's going to be tempted by this wicked king of Sodom, Melchizedek shows up with a blessing. Steve, does God show up at just the right time to encourage us?

SPEAKER_00: 22:06

Over in the New Testament, Paul writes about that. He says, at the right time and appointed time, Jesus Christ came to die for our sins. When you look at the timing of the type of death that the Messiah was to have, which was crucifixion, it's described in Psalm 22. You have that narrow time frame of the Roman occupation of the province of Judah, and crucifixion was their primary way in which they meted out capital punishment. Yes, God shows up at the right time and at the appointed time for him to be able to be a propitiation, as we talked about in earlier sessions, for our sins, a satisfactory sacrifice, so that God could be both just and the justifier.

SPEAKER_01: 22:58

Some preacher that was better than I came along one time and said, God may not come when you want him, but he's always right on time. Well, what did Jesus have at the Last Supper?

SPEAKER_00: 23:18

It was a Passover supper, so he had bread and wine. He said, This is the bread representing my body that's broken for you. This is the wine that represents the blood that I shed for you, part of the new covenant. So bread and wine.

SPEAKER_01: 23:32

That just reinforces that Melchizedek is a Christ figure. He is a type of Christ. He is king and priest. He approaches with a blessing. He brings bread and wine, the signs of the new covenant, way back there in even prior to the old covenant. The king of righteousness, he receives tithes. He very much parallels a Christ figure. Also, Jesus is identified as the Prince of Peace in Isaiah 9.6. Melchizedek is a king of peace. There's also this mystery about this man Melchizedek. We don't know a whole lot about him. He just shows up with bread and wine and a blessing and then leaves. We have all these questions about Melchizedek that we don't have answers to, but we also have questions about Christ that we don't have answers to. There's a lot of questions about Christ. We ask questions like, how does his human nature and Jesus' divine nature work together? Well, I don't know. Maybe there's somebody out there that does, but that's a mystery. What did Jesus look like? We don't know. It doesn't really tell us. Why does Jesus love the unlovable and people just like you and me? Why? We don't really know that. It's only because of his nature. Why did Jesus create people in his image in the first place when he didn't have to? There's all these questions about Christ, and there's questions about Melchizedek. He just shows up with bread and wine and a blessing, and then he disappears. He walks onto the pages of scripture and then walks off again into eternity. Note that Melchizedek and Abraham shared bread and wine together. This is a foreshadow of the bread and wine in the communion of the New Testament in the upper room that's in Christ's blood. Jesus introduced a bread and wine as a communion in the New Testament, but here it is way back here in Genesis 14. The word of God is amazing, foreshadowing the new covenant with the Lord Jesus way back here in Genesis. The other thing we find here that's amazing is that Melchizedek does not have a genealogy. Steve, what do we find a lot of in Genesis around genealogies?

SPEAKER_00: 25:54

Just that. Genealogy was important to the Jewish people of their heritage. Where did they come from? And of course, in Genesis itself, it traces genealogy all the way back to Adam at one point. But this was important to the Jewish people. And I think it's one reason why the writer of Hebrews, because he's writing to Hebrew people, he is using this as an example. Now, there's some people that have gone into great detail to try and figure out what's talking about here in verse three. And I think that sometimes they just think about it too much, is a phrase that I like to use. That they're trying to figure out who this person is, if he doesn't have a genealogy with no mother and father. But I think it's just simply the writer of Hebrews using Melchizedek as a type of Christ. There's no genealogy that's talked about of Melchizedek. Therefore, there's no father or mother that's talked about him. As you mentioned before, there's nothing really talked about his life other than this example that we have of his encounter with Abraham as a type of Jesus. Jesus isn't a created being, and he's an eternal being. Therefore, Melchizedek is a type of Christ. I think the author is just using that as an example in verse three. I don't think the author is trying to say anything other than that.

SPEAKER_01: 27:21

If we look at Genesis, it has a lot of genealogies, especially of the key people. In fact, it gets tedious. Have you read it lately? It gets boring with the tedium of who begat who and how long did they live and who was the father and who was the son. It just goes on and on with genealogies. All the key people have a genealogy. Who is the father? Who was the son? Here in Hebrews 7:3, this Melchizedek is without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God. He is a picture of Christ. If Genesis has anything, it has the genealogies of these people, it's the beginnings of them. To this day, ethnic history is very important to many, if not most, Jewish people, so that they can prove they're of the correct lineage. And in the ancient days, especially the Levites, they had to, in order to serve in the temple, they had to be able to prove that they were of the right genealogy, the right ethnic origin. Melchizedek has no family listed, no father, no mother, no sons in there. He is a picture of Christ who has no beginning or no end. Jesus was in the beginning, it says in John 1:1. Melchizedek is this type. Further, Genesis lists the ages of many people, how long they lived and how old they were when they died. Yet here in the middle of verse 3 in Hebrews 7, Melchizedek has neither beginning of days nor end of life. Yet, resembling the Son of God, he continues as a priest forever. Our Christ has no beginning nor end. Jesus comes out of eternity into creation, meets with us over bread and wine, and then ascends back into eternity. How profound this is. We get the privilege of seeing him in a glimpse in the Gospels when he came here on earth. But he was from the beginning, he came from eternity, and he went back into eternity. Steve, we get a picture of that here in Melchizedek. I think that there's going to be such a rich application here to Melchizedek in his application as both king and priest. But we're going to have to get to that next time.

SPEAKER_00: 29:48

It's going to be great getting into a little bit deeper of theology as we go through board with chapter seven. Thank you so much for watching and listening. And as always, may God bless you.