Title: God's Promise and Our Hope
God's promise
The story of Abraham is recorded between Genesis 12-25. His story is very dramatic. Abraham, who lived in Ur of the Chaldeans, emigrated to Haran with his father Terah. When his father died in Haran, Abraham took his nephew Lot and left Haran to settle in Canaan. Many of the stories that followed are so famous that even Sunday School children are familiar with them. Abraham is now recognized as the ancestor of three world religions. Of course, Jews are recognized as religious ancestors by us Christians, and so are Muslims. Abraham had two wives. The descendants of Isaac from Sarah, his concubine, were Israel, and the descendants of Ishmael, born of Hagar, his son-in-law, were Muslims in the Middle East. After all, it is no exaggeration to say that Abraham was the actual or spiritual ancestor of all mankind.
The question of descendants was also urgent for Abraham. He was already married before leaving his native Ur of the Chaldeans, but had no children after he settled in Canaan through Haran. For Abraham, who was living as a stranger in a foreign country, to have a child was the same as gaining life. God had promised Abraham a prosperous descendant at the very moment when he had to give up hope for children because he had been childless for a long time and had grown quite old. As promised, Abraham had Ishmael and Isaac, and Isaac, the youngest son, had Jacob and Esau, and after that, they formed a great nation in their own way.
Second, because God cannot lie, his promises do not change.(18a) How do you describe the writer of Hebrews? God does not lie. No he can't lie. If he lies, he is no longer God. To tell what the Word of God is, you need to look at whether it is a lie or not. The problem lies in the fact that people often claim that the Word of God is what they want according to their own needs, or that we do not recognize what is true. Hebrews makes it clear. God cannot lie, essentially, ontologically. This means that God is the truth.
God is our refuge
That's right. We always have to make choices in life. As you can see in the Abraham case, will you try to fulfill it on your own account because of the anxiety of not having children now, or will you listen to God's promises. The God who promised life to Abraham is the God we believe in. He is the Master of life, the One who completes it in ways we do not expect. So the writer of Hebrews says in verse 18b: “Therefore, we who have taken refuge in that God can gain great courage and hold fast to the hope that lies before us.”
Why does the biblical writer say that God is a refuge? The word refuge appears frequently in the psalms. It is a term used by Jews every day. That presupposes the fact that our lives are not very safe. Whether in the time of Abraham, in which today's text is set, or in the early Christian era, when the text was written, there were constant dangers of survival. Although the types were different from time to time, the risk of survival remained the same. In the case of Abraham, the fact that he had no descendants was a threat to his survival, and in the case of the early Christian community, persecution by Judaism and Roman power was a threat to his survival. Abraham took refuge in God's promises, and the early Christians, more specifically, took refuge in Jesus Christ.
But think carefully. Were God and Jesus really their refuges? Abraham had a son, but only one Isaac. The eldest son, Ishmael, left them shortly after Isaac was born. Although Isaac was obtained through God's promise, it did not completely solve the crisis of survival. That crisis has continued ever since. Through slavery in Egypt, life in the wilderness, and Babylonian captivity, Israel faced the crisis of survival. Even the early Christian community did not get out of that crisis at once. To say that God is the refuge in this sense does not mean that all problems were completely resolved at once. Faith is not missing out on God's promises despite the crisis. Although there is a real crisis, it is an attitude of life that trusts in the God of promise who keeps life.
path of hope
The writer of Hebrews teaches that we who have made God our refuge can hold fast our hope. The hope that the writer of Hebrews is talking about now is not the land and descendants that Abraham had hoped for. Abraham would have thought that life was preserved through the land and his posterity, but the early Christians hoped for a different life. What is it?
Gentlemen, listen to the writer of Hebrews. We enter the Most Holy of the Heavenly Temple. It means that it coincides with the source of life. I'm not sure I can explain what it is specifically. No one can explain. But we believe it to be true and everlasting life, as the Bible teaches. Just as the seeds cannot fully perceive the world of flowers, but they can believe it, and as it is, we believe in entering the Most Holy of the Heavenly Temple, the source of life.
What we need here is hope. This is not just a hope in terms of your “dreams come true”. The Christian hope is very specific. Jesus Christ is our hope. It can be said that Christ, the Lord of the Resurrection, protects our souls and brings us into the Most Holy of the heavenly temple. That is the “hope set before us” in verse 18b. This is the hope we must hold on to. Jesus Christ is the anchor that secures our lives.
The reason for this is explained in Hebrews verse 20: That Jesus became the eternal high priest and entered the place before us. The Most Holy is literally the most holy place. Jesus has already been there. It means that you have been transformed into a new life just as a flower blooms from a seed. He has become the High Priest who offers the sacrifice of life for us. That Jesus Christ is the hope of our lives. Amen.