Hebrews 13:5,6 The Greatest Promise in the Bible

The greatest promise in the Bible is found 5 times in the Bible.  The promise is found in Hebrews 13:5, and it was also given on 4 different occasions in the Old Testament to three different people, and the writer of Hebrews applies it to believers today. 

Now why is all that important?

Because a lot of people who went to school to study the Bible will tell you that a lot of Bible verses that people love to quote don’t really apply to you, because they were spoken to someone else.  The first rule of Bible interpretation is to look at the context of any Bible passage you are studying.  Who is speaking, to whom is he speaking, and under what circumstances?  Now this is where it gets tricky.

Actually everything is in the Bible was written to someone else when it was written, so if you are not careful, you might not have much left that you will be confident actually applies to you. 

But here the author of Hebrews takes a promise first given to Israel, then to Joshua, and then to Solomon, and then he applies it to every single believer today. 

So what does the verse say?

On the surface, it says that God will never leave you nor forsake you.

When you look at this promise, it feels like something is missing.  It’s like you walked into a room, and you hear somebody say to somebody else, “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything.”  He didn’t mean everything single thing in the world.  There was something particular that he was talking about.  So we need first to look at these passages and see what was going on there

In Deuteronomy 31, the Israelites were about to enter a land that God had promised to give them after He had freed them from slavery in Egypt.  The problem was that this land was filled with people who were a lot bigger and stronger than they were.  God was going to judge those peoples for their wickedness, and He was going to use the Israelites to do that.  Years before, some of their people had seen these giants, and they told them that there was no way they would be able to defeat them.  They were like grasshoppers in their sight.  So Moses addresses the people and says:

Deuteronomy 31:6      “Be strong and courageous, do not be afraid or tremble at them, for the LORD your God is the one who goes with you. He will not fail you or forsake you.”

Now think about this for a minute.  The whole Old Testament is based around essentially one theme, and this theme was supposed to be a pattern of the Christian life.

God promised His people a land, a land flowing with milk and honey.  The land was filled with inhabitants.  Many of them giants.  They had to take it.  It was not something they could just walk in and enjoy. 

Twenty-five times in the Bible, somebody was told to be strong, to do the work that God had given them to do.  God expects His people to get tough. 

And then he says the same thing in negative terms.  Do not be afraid, or timid, or tremble.  For the Lord is the one who goes with you. 

And then he says: He will not fail you or forsake you.  You can be brave and courageous and strong, and you don’t have to be afraid, or timid, or tremble, because God wouldn’t let them down and leave them to be defeated. 

Two verses later, Moses says basically the same thing to Joshua, who was to replace him after he died and to lead the people into the Promised Land. 

Deuteronomy 31:8  8      “The LORD is the one who goes ahead of you; He will be with you. He will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.”

He tells Joshua that God is going before him.  So whatever they encounter, it has passed through God first. 

I’m a little hesitant to teach that, because Christians often seem to draw the wrong conclusions.  To say that everything passes through God first tells them that the thing is God’s will, but the question is: are these things to be endured or overcome?  I think too often Christians think God wants them to live with certain problems rather than overcome them. 

Three years ago, I got cancer.  It went to stage 4, and the doctor said this treatment is just a bandage.  He wasn’t really expecting it to make a difference.  But now my tests are clean.

 

Soon after, I had a diagnosis of fibrosis on my lungs.  That has about a 5-year survival rate, but now my lungs are fine. 

I never thought I was going to die.  That never entered my mind.  It wasn’t an easy time in my life.  For a while, I had no idea what God was thinking or doing.  But in time I saw that He was there all along and was working on some things in my life.

So, yes, God goes before us.  And, yes, sometimes that doesn’t mean that everything will be easy.  But God’s purpose for Israel was greater than they would have imagined, and it is the same for us.

The next time that promise shows up, God spoke it to Joshua.   Joshua 1:5      “No man will be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you; I will not fail you or forsake you.

Joshua was now the leader of the Israelites, and he was to lead them to their promised land.  God was going to work in Joshua’s life as He had done with Moses.  He promised him victory over every adversary.  And He seals that promise with another one:  I will not fail you or forsake you.

King David spoke the same words to his son Solomon who was about to begin another great task.  I Chronicles 28, but we will skip over that.

So we come to the book of Hebrews, Hebrews 13:5   Let your character, your way of life, your conduct be without the love of money, being content with what you have; for He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you,”  6  so that we confidently say, “The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid, what will man to do to me?”

The first three times this promise was given, the circumstances were that the people had a God-given task to do that humanly speaking was impossible and very dangerous.  They were to approach this task boldly and without any fear, because God wouldn’t leave them or forsake them.

The fourth time the promise was given, again there was a huge task to be done.  It wasn’t dangerous, just huge.

Here in Hebrews, it was a different kind of challenge, more of a temptation. 

Sometimes money is the means to get things that we like.  Other times it stands for security.  A lot of times in my life I felt poor.  I don’t like that feeling.  In Hebrews here, it seems to be a combination of both.  He says to be content with what you have, but then he talks about fear of what could happen in the future.

And in either case, the response is: God says: I will never leave you nor forsake you.

I never explained why I think this is the greatest promise in the Bible.  The answer is that no other promise in the Bible is expressed as forcibly as this one. 

Let’s break this down and see all that is there.

First let’s look at the word ‘leave.’

Exodus 23:11 It means to leave the ground alone, lie fallow.

In Deuteronomy 31, it would mean to leave you on your own and not to give you the help you need to succeed.

In Malachi 3:20 and Acts 16, it refers to chains being loosed.

In  I Chronicles 21:15, it refers to an angel with a sword in its hand, and he relaxes his hand

In 2 Chronicles 10:9, it means to ease off, lighten up.

In Joshua 24:19, it means to forgive, or you could say, let go of.

In I Samuel 11:3, it means to leave alone, like, just leave, leave me alone.

In I Samuel 12:23, Samuel said: “Far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD by ceasing to pray for you.”

In this context, it’s like God saying: I will not stop doing what I have been doing and leave you on your own.

Forsake means pretty much that: desert, abandon.  Leave you in the lurch, which means to leave you in a vulnerable or unsupported position.

In Greek, you don’t need a noun or pronoun in front of a verb.  The verb form tells you first, second, or third person.  But the writer adds it here: HE has said.  And the verb is in the perfect tense, which in Greek emphasizes the present state. 

So it’s more like, God Himself said this, and this is where it stands.  It’s not something He said once a long time ago.  This is how things are now.

The promise is not a future tense.  It does not say I will not.  These are what is called aorist tenses.  It is usually translated as a simple past tense, but the idea is a point of time rather than continual or habitual action.  It’s more like: I don’t leave you on your own or forsake you.  And the aorist would also add the touch: at all.  Not even a little.

The words ‘you’ are singular and put in the front of the sentence.  This is not a general promise to the Church or Israel.  It is a promise to you as an individual, and putting it first emphasizes it.

The verse reads: You, Brian, Randy, Libby, I don’t leave on your own, and you I don’t forsake at all.

But there’s more.

In English, we have what we call a double negative.  I cannot not stay with you.  Meaning, it would be impossible for me not to stay with you.  In Greek, a double negative makes the negative stronger.  You I absolutely don’t leave and you I absolutely don’t ever forsake.

But there’s more.  Instead of ‘and’ between the two clauses, it’s another negative.  That’s five negatives in 9 words in Greek. 

In the strongest possible language, God says that you are in His hands, and He will not let you go. 

I know some of you are hurting, and you don’t know why your life seems like such a mess, why so much seems so wrong.

We can’t answer every question in ten minutes or less, but the first step is to get your mind off your situation and more on God.  And keep listening, or reading.