Messianic Jews 6:13-20
Letter to the Messianic Jews

In my last post in this series, we examined Messianic Jews 6:9-12 ~ Lay Hold of Yeshua and His Redemption ~ Part 2. In this post, we conclude this section by reviewing Messianic Jews 6:13-20 ~ Lay Hold of Yeshua and His Redemption ~ Part 4 to learn that God’s covenant promises are unchanging.

God’s Covenant Promises Are Unchanging

“¹³ For when God made His promise to Avraham, He swore an oath to do what He had promised; and since there was no one greater than Himself for Him to swear by, He swore by Himself ¹⁴ and said, “I will certainly bless you, and I will certainly give you many descendants”;
¹⁵ and so, after waiting patiently, Avraham saw the promise fulfilled. ¹⁶ Now people swear oaths by someone greater than themselves, and confirmation by an oath puts an end to all dispute. ¹⁷ Therefore, when God wanted to demonstrate still more convincingly the unchangeable character of His intentions to those who were to receive what He had promised, He added an oath to the promise; ¹⁸ so that through two unchangeable things, in neither of which God could lie, we, who have fled to take a firm hold on the hope set before us, would be strongly encouraged. ¹⁹ We have this hope as a sure and safe anchor for ourselves, a hope that goes right on through to what is inside the parokhet, ²⁰ where a forerunner has entered on our behalf, namely, Yeshua, who has become a cohen gadol forever, to be compared with Malki-Tzedek.”  ~ Hebrews 6:13-20 (CJB)

Avraham was a man of great trust. Afterall, he offered his son Yitz’chak as an offering to God trusting that God would supply a substitute. The double security of oath and promise which God offered him in B’resheet 22:17 should strongly encourage us, who also have been given a hope set before us of going right on through… the parokhet of the Most Holy Place in heaven to God Himself (see Messianic Jews 10:22).

We can enter into the Most Holy Place because we are united with Yeshua, and he has entered ahead of us as our forerunner. He has been able to enter because He has become a cohen gadol forever, to be compared with Malki-Tzedek. The author thus returns to the line of thought which he left at 5:10 to urge the readers to diligence. He also is preparing the groundwork for his argument in the next chapter (7:20-21).

In the ancient world, the anchor was the symbol of hope. Epictetus says: “A ship should never depend on one anchor or a life on one hope.” Pythagoras said: “Wealth is a weak anchor; fame is still weaker. What then are the anchors which are strong? Wisdom, great-heartedness, courage—these are the anchors which no storm can shake.”  [1] The writer of Messianic Jews insists that Believers posses the greatest hope in the world.

That hope is one which enters into the parokhet of the Most Holy Place. In the Temple, the most sacred of all places was the Most Holy Place. Within the Most Holy Place, there was held to abide the very presence of God. Into that place, only one person in all the world could go, and he was the Cohen HaGodol; and even he might enter that Most Holy Place on just one day of the year, the Day of Atonement.

The writer to the Hebrews uses a most illuminating word about Jesus. He says that he entered the presence of God as our forerunner. The Greek word is prodromos. It has three stages of meaning: (1) It means one who rushes on; (2) It means a pioneer; or, (3) It means a scout who goes ahead to see that it is safe for the body of the troops to follow. Yeshua went into the presence of God to make it safe for all humanity to follow.

Before Yeshua came, God was the distant stranger whom only a very few might approach and that at the peril of their lives. But because of what Yeshua was and did, God has become the friend of every person. Once humanity thought of Him as barring the door; now they think of the entrance to His presence as thrown wide open for all.

In my next post, we’ll begin a new mini-series on Yeshua’s Malki-Tzedek Cohenhood Surpasses the Levitical. We’ll explore Messianic Jews 7:1-10 on the priority of the Malki-Tzedek Cohenhood.

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[1] Barclay’s Daily Study Bible (NT) by William Barclay.