THE MAIN IDEA
God’s promise is Christ, our unfailing hope.

The passage reminds us of three unshakable truths about God’s faithfulness.

GOD’s FAITHFULNESS DELIVERS A PROMISE
The theme of God filling the earth with His glory in Christ Jesus through His people is one of the central themes of all of Scripture. We see it throughout the Bible, from beginning to end. We see this theme in the covenant promise God made to Abraham, and also confirmed with an oath to Himself, to bless Abraham and give him many descendants. God’s promise is also to bless the whole world through Abraham’s “seed,” that is, Jesus Christ. This is basically the same covenant promise God made with Noah (Genesis 9:1), Adam and Eve (Genesis 1:28), and Jesus’s disciples (Matthew 28:19- 20). In fact, every covenant that God makes in the Bible with His people is grounded in this promise to bless us and be with us and multiply us as He uses us to fill the earth with His glory in Jesus’s name through God-fearing, God-honoring, God-worshiping, God-loving communities and families—the church. And that covenant promise is sealed and made absolutely certain with an oath by God Himself.

GOD’s FAITHFULNESS GROWS OUR FAITH
In the Book of Hebrews, Abraham and his wife Sarah are presented as the foremost examples of faith. But their exemplary faith was really the result of God’s faithfulness. God had allowed Abraham and Sarah to conceive a child (Isaac) when it should have been impossible to do so. So when God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on an altar, Abraham showed no hesitation in taking steps to carry out God’s command. He reasoned that if God commanded him to sacrifice Isaac, the child of God’s covenant promise, then God would raise him up from the dead. God’s faithfulness that prompted Abraham’s faith, and that is when God confirmed His covenant promise with an oath. But it makes no sense that God should take an oath, since it is impossible for Him to lie (verse 18). God did this in order to remind all generations of believers in the strongest way possible that it is impossible for God to forsake His covenant promise. Also, the author of Hebrews wants to remind us that if we have “fled” from our former way of life, as if we were fleeing from some great danger, we need to seriously check our sanity if we are considering abandoning the faith and going back into that danger. But whenever we stumble, it is God’s faithfulness that restores our faith every time. It’s God’s faithfulness that grows our faith all the time.

GOD’s FAITHFULNESS STRENGTHENS OUR HOPE
God delivers a promise that He has sworn with an oath not only to grow our faith but also to strengthen our hope in Christ Jesus—not hope in education, careers, wealth or success or our zip codes or people or anything else in this world—hope in Christ alone. There are three reasons that hope in Christ is the most important thing in our lives. (1) Our hope in Christ is the “anchor” for our souls (verse 19), keeping us from drifting away because of the devil’s schemes. (2) Our hope in Christ is the guarantee that we ourselves will most definitely enter into God’s heavenly sanctuary when Jesus returns. (3) Our hope in Christ Jesus is the key to our assurance of salvation in seasons of doubt, the fuel for our perseverance in seasons of pain, and the reason for our joy in every season.

Discussion: Looking back, what are some things you have placed your hope in to find happiness?