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I. MAN'S PERIL AND NEED. This is set before us in the striking words, "fleeing for refuge." There is one sort of escape by getting simply out of bondage; there is another by reaching a place of perfect security. Many a bird has escaped from a cage only to become the prey of some wild bird or beast. It has not been able to attain a refuge. The need is further suggested by the word "anchor (see Acts 27:29). The shipmen fear lest the ship will fall on the rocks, and so they flee to the anchors, of which they cast out four. There is the need of security; need of solid holding-ground for the anchor; need of an anchor which itself will not give way. Vain is the anchor without the anchorage; vain the anchorage without the anchor. Anchor itself, and cable, and connection with the ground, and connection with the ship, - all these must be seen to. Moreover, there is needed a calm sense of being in the right way; a composing assurance that when the anchor is thrown into the water and disappears it will find a hold. We need the strong παράκλνδις. We need to have a Divine power pressing on our hearts the right thing to do; to take from us all uncertainty, vacillation, trimming, yielding to plausible criticism from others. We need a calm, intelligent, apt use of the saving instruments which God puts into our hands. When sailors are out in mid-ocean they do not fling over the anchor; and when they are close to the rocks they do not behave as they would in mid-ocean.

II. GOD'S SUPPLY FOR THE NEED. Look first at the anchorage. We must not push the metaphor too far. The one great point in it is that it gives us such a clear illustration of what it is to find security in the invisible. The anchorage-ground is something unseen, and yet it gives a safety which is not to be found in anything that is seen. Indeed, the seen things are full of danger. There are the rocks; and the water in which the ship rests will not resist its progress towards them. And so our great hold and safety is to be in the invisible. We are to make sure of the reality of God's plan; that he has a plan, that it is a plan immutable; that it is indeed a plan of God, not subject to the collapses which come through human caprice, infirmity, and shortsightedness. Hence God announces and exhibits his plan through two immutable things. What are these? Surely one of them is the oath of God. We know that a man, always veracious and deliberate of speech, wants to be taken in an unusually serious way when he adds to what he has to say a solemn adjuration. And of course, when God speaks, his word is always serious; but he has his own way of calling man's attention to its seriousness. Then the other immutable thing is surely the priesthood, the Melchizedek priesthood of Jesus. Behind the veil constituted by the visible world there is a God who has sworn the solemn oath with respect to that inheritance which all inherit who by their faith are children of Abraham; and there also is the great High Priest, Jesus Christ, "the same yesterday, and today, and for ever." The anchorage thus being given, there is the anchor also to be considered. And here we are to consider the anchor, not so much as something which we fling into the unseen, as something which out of the unseen is realized to us. It is as if, when a ship is drifting towards a dangerous shore, a beneficent hand should suddenly reach out of the waves and fling a rope to be fastened to the ship. Our great confidence, hope, and joy should be in this, that Jesus, vanished into the unseen, has still a living and active connection with a needy world, Note how full this whole passage is of strong words. Examine the passage in the original, and this will come out very dearly. Strong words in ordinary speech are too often the resort of weak men; but here they have to be used at every turn in order to set before us the stable anchorage and the solid, well-forged anchor which have been furnished to us by God himself. - Y.

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KJV: Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath:

WEB: In this way God, being determined to show more abundantly to the heirs of the promise the immutability of his counsel, interposed with an oath;