Hebrews 6:7

For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened... if they fall away to renew them again to repentance... For the earth which drinks in the rain that often comes upon it, it bears herbs useful for those by whom it is cultivated, it receives a blessing from God. But if it bears thorns and briars, it is rejected and near to be cursed, whose end is to be burned... This hope we have as an anchor for the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the presence behind the veil where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus having become high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.

When God promises, He swears by Himself—and that unchanging oath, not our perseverance, is the anchor of our hope.

The Parable of the Sower and the Picture of Fruitfulness

A farmer went out to plant seed, said Jesus. Some fell on the footpath, and the birds snatched it away. Some fell on shallow, stony ground; it sprang up quickly, but having no depth of root, the sun caused it to wilt and die. Some fell among thorns, and the weeds choked it out so it never became fruitful. Finally, some fell on ground that had been prepared, and it produced fruit—some thirty times, some sixty, some a hundred times what was planted.

This is one of Jesus' parables, perhaps His most famous story. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, in the sections that gather His parables, this one always appears first. It is one of the longer parables, and thankfully one of the only ones He explained. Something about the way He told it clued His disciples in that He wasn't merely talking about farming. So they came and asked, "What does this story mean?"

In Luke 8:11–15 Jesus answered. The seed is the Word of God. Those by the wayside hear, and the devil takes the Word out of their hearts lest they believe and be saved. The shallow, rocky ground are those who receive the Word with joy but have no root, believing for a little while until temptation or trial burns it out. The thorny ground are those choked by the cares of this world and the desires for riches and pleasures, so no fruit comes. But the good ground are those who hear with a good and noble heart, keep the Word, and bear fruit—thirty, sixty, a hundredfold.

The Same Metaphor in Hebrews 6

As we progress through the hard passages of Hebrews, we just dealt with the difficult issue of apostasy in verses 4–6 (you can find that message at lifeinconnection.com). Now the author moves into a metaphor used throughout Scripture—by Jesus, the apostles, and the prophets—the picture of farming and fruitfulness as it relates to faith in God and faithfulness to Him.

Hebrews 6:7–8 says, "For the earth which drinks in the rain that often comes upon it, it bears herbs useful for those by whom the earth is cultivated. It receives a blessing from God." We could not have a better illustration on a rainy day here in San Diego County. Rain is a blessing from God, and we most certainly need it. Yet among the good things that are watered, some things grow that we would rather not see.

"But if it brings forth thorns and briars, it is rejected and near to being cursed, whose end is to be burned." I have cursed some growth in my own backyard—weeds that went from little sprouts in January to waist-high by March, until I finally went to Home Depot for something to burn them all out. The same water that blesses the cultivated ground also waters the thorns and briars, which are rejected and useless—and so they are burned.

God the Vinedresser and the Warning of Judgment

In many of these passages, God is the keeper of the garden. In John 15, Jesus says, "I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit." God is interested in fruitfulness. Jesus is the vine, we are the branches, and the Father comes looking for fruit.

"Abide in Me," Jesus says, "for the branch cannot bear fruit of itself." We cannot produce fruit on our own; we must stay plugged into Him. "Without Me you can do nothing"—not just a few somethings, but nothing. And then those striking words: "If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned."

So apostasy leads to unfruitfulness, and unfruitfulness leads to a place of judgment. That which is unfruitful is cut off and cast into the fire. Point one: do not be burned by unfruitfulness. It is a heavy, challenging truth. I, like you, prefer encouraging passages over cautions and warnings—but on a rainy day, let's get right into them.

Isaiah's Song of the Vineyard

This is not only a New Testament idea. In Isaiah 5, the prophet sings a song about his Beloved's vineyard. God dug it, cleared out the stones, planted it with the choicest vine, built a tower for protection, and made a winepress. He prepared the perfect land on a fruitful hill, gave it every possible blessing, and expected good grapes—"but it brought forth wild grapes," sour and useless.

Then God speaks: "Judge between Me and My vineyard. What more could have been done to My vineyard than I have done to it? Why, when I expected good grapes, did it bring forth wild grapes?" And so He declares, "I will take away its hedge, and it shall be burned... I will lay it waste... I will command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it."

Is this just an actual vineyard? Verse 7: "For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are His pleasant plant." God selected them, redeemed them, planted them in the Promised Land, and poured out blessing—yet they turned and worshiped idols. The whole book of Isaiah is about a redeemed and blessed people walking away from God, and God stepping back to allow judgment to come. These are sobering words from Isaiah 5, John 15, and Hebrews 6.

God is always graciously tending our lives to see fruit come. In another of Jesus' stories, the master is ready to uproot an unfruitful fig tree, but the keeper says, "Give me one more season; I'll dig around it and fertilize it." God does not quickly throw us in the chipper. He longs for fruit. But where there is none, after He continues to look for it, He cautions us with these challenging passages about a burning that comes.

Make Your Call and Election Sure

In light of such warnings, what should we do? Point two: make your call and election sure. In Hebrews 6:9–10 the author says, "But beloved, we are confident of better things concerning you, yes, things that accompany salvation, though we speak in this manner. For God is not unjust to forget your work and labor of love, which you have shown toward His name, in that you have ministered to the saints and do minister."

The author—whom I believe was Timothy—encourages his readers in the midst of all these heavy cautions: we see fruitfulness in you, the things that accompany salvation. And not only do we see them, but God sees. What an encouragement to know that God sees the good fruit in our lives. He takes careful note of our service and our labor of love.

Yet verse 11 adds, "We desire that each one of you show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope until the end." We see the fruit now, but we want to keep seeing it. The end hasn't happened yet—maybe it's just around the corner, but we're still here. So God says, press on with full assurance of faith until the end. In other words, do really well to keep doing well.

Weeding, Watering, and Waiting

Paul says in Galatians 6, "Do not grow weary in doing the right thing, for in due season you shall reap a harvest if you don't faint." When I was about fourteen, I took a job farming an acre and a half behind a farm stand. I knew nothing about farming, but they taught me—and it's hard work. You plant, and then you wait. You weed, you water, you wait. Sprouts come and you get excited, but then there's more weeding, watering, and waiting before the joy of the harvest.

The Christian life has a lot of weeding, watering, and waiting. In the midst of it comes the temptation to think it isn't worth it—I made $4.25 an hour, and even that wasn't always enough motivation. So Paul says, do not grow weary, for in due season you shall reap if you do not lose heart.

What does this look like? In 2 Peter 1:5–7, Peter says, "Giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love." Why? "For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness."

"Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble." The long game is eternity with God. It is easy to become shortsighted, to grow weary in doing good and give up. The people the author wrote to were in that weary place, ready to throw in the towel on the whole Jesus thing. So he says, "Do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises."

Faith That Produces Confident Hope

Point three: faith toward God produces a confident hope for eternity, leading to patient perseverance here and now. Now, by this point in our study of these warning passages, you might begin to think the author—or I—am saying your salvation depends on your works, that you were saved by grace but are sustained by works. That's the objection a Calvinistic reading often raises, and we must answer it.

Notice the example the author gives. "Imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises"—and then in verse 13 he points to Abraham. "When God made a promise to Abraham, because He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself." When people make an oath, they swear by something greater than themselves. In Jesus' day men swore by the temple, then by the gold of the temple. "An oath for confirmation is for them the end of all dispute."

But what can God swear by? Since He could swear by nothing greater, He swore by Himself: "Surely blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply you." And so, after Abraham had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. Did he receive it because God promised it, or because he patiently endured? Yes—both, and they are not contradictory.

God's Unchanging Oath Is Our Anchor

God determined "to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us."

Abraham was seventy-five, childless, with a barren wife ten years younger, when God said, "Follow Me and I will bless you and make your descendants as many as the stars." Abraham asked how he could know, and God answered, "I swear by Myself." Abraham followed by faith. Twenty-five years passed with the promise unfulfilled, yet Abraham endured—not because of his own perseverance, but because God had made the promise. His hope was built on the promise of God. Though he fell into sin along the way, he persisted, and ultimately obtained the promise when Sarah bore Isaac at ninety and Abraham was a hundred.

Point four: God's unchanging oath and promise are the basis for our confidence and hope. My hope is not built on my perseverance; my perseverance is built upon my hope. I keep following because I have hope, and I have hope because He promised it.

Hebrews 6:19 says, "This hope we have as an anchor for the soul, both sure and steadfast, which enters the presence behind the veil where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus, having become High Priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek." Jesus died on the cross for us. God gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes will not perish but have everlasting life. The unchanging Creator swore an oath and gave a promise: if we trust in Jesus and His death on our behalf, He will give us salvation. That hope is the anchor of our souls, anchored to Jesus and His finished work. I do not have hope of salvation because of how well I persevere; I persevere because I hope in the salvation Jesus earned for me.

Hope That Produces the Fruit of Faithfulness

Point five: our confident hope of salvation in Jesus will produce the fruit of faithfulness to Jesus. The extent to which you are faithful and persevere as a follower of Jesus is the extent to which you have hope in His salvation.

Do you have a sure and steadfast hope, an anchor for your soul anchored to Jesus alone? Or the kind of hope I've heard from many over the years? When I ask, "If you died tonight, would you go to heaven?" some answer with despair, "Well, I hope so." When I ask the basis of their hope, they say, "I'm a pretty good person." If you are basing your hope on being a pretty good person, you have every reason to question it.

But if the basis of your hope is the sure Rock of our salvation, Jesus Christ the righteous, you can stand with total confidence that you will be with Him in the end—because He promised it and swore an oath to you. That is good news.

Closing Prayer

Jesus, we come before You today, the author and finisher of our faith, the High Priest after the order of Melchizedek, which we will delve into in the coming weeks. Thank You that You offered the sacrifice once for all, so that we don't need to daily muster up some new sacrifice to cover our failures. We all fail all the time, and yet what You did is sufficient—enough to give us steadfast, enduring hope that is an absolute certainty we will be with You. Not wishful thinking, but a certainty. We thank You, Jesus.

If you don't yet have that certainty—if you hope to reach heaven the way you hope to win the lottery—today you can put your trust in Christ and have that hope as an anchor for your soul. Jesus said, "Whosoever comes to Me, I will give him living water." All you have to do is come and put your trust in Him.

Pray with me: Dear Jesus, I know that I need You. I cannot save myself, but I trust that You died to save me. I pray that You would come into my life, forgive me of my sin, and help me to follow You by faith. In Jesus' name, amen.