The blessed assuarance that was sealed with divine oath

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The Grace of God will liberate you from yourself and from your flesh. It will free you from working out your salvation on your own.

For when God made a promise to Abraham, because He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself, saying, ‘Surely blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply you.’ And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. For men indeed swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is for them an end of all dispute. (Hebrews 6:13-16 NKJV)

After all, working out your salvation is happening without your help!
It’s not about you. It’s about Him!

Thus God, determining 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. This hope we have as an anchor of 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. (Hebrews 6:17-20 NKJV)

God’s Covenant

Two things cannot be broken:

1. The Promise

2. The Oath

When you look at a covenant in Bible times, it was sealed with an oath. Therefore, it should be apparent that the covenant and the oath depends upon the two parties coming into covenant.
The passage in Hebrews 6 refers to the fact that God made a Covenant with the children of Israel, yet they broke that Old Covenant. Since God could not trust humanity, He Himself became flesh. God, the Father, and Jesus, the Son, made the Covenant—“By Myself,” according to the Almighty God.
Therefore, the New Covenant is eternal and cannot be broken. For the Covenant to be broken God would cease to be God. God made the Covenant with Himself. When a covenant was made it took two parties. In the New Covenant, God guaranteed it by Himself. The Covenant is not dependent on man. The Old Covenant was made between God and man, and man broke that Covenant. The New Covenant is given by God and established with Himself, by Himself. It is impossible for the New Covenant to be broken.
Why?

• God made the Covenant, and
• God cannot lie.

The New Covenant was sworn to by God. Therefore, it is forever! All promises spoken by the prophets came with that eternal guarantee! It is no longer dependent on man—it is dependent upon God.
We are told:

“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12-13 NKJV).

But what does that mean? And how does the New Covenant impact “working out your salvation”?

From the beginning, our salvation came from God!

Humanity never asked God for salvation. When Adam and Eve sinned, there was no show of repentance at all. Instead of repenting, they hid from God, wishing that He would go away. Instead of repenting, it was just the opposite. Man did not even ask God to forgive but rather put the blame on others.
In Genesis 3, we are told that God asked Adam, “Where are you?” At that moment, Adam blamed God for his sin: “The woman you gave me…” (verse 12). There is no sign of repentance. Adam showed no interest in confessing his sin.
John 3:19 is the Holy Spirit’s commentary on humanity:

“And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”

That commentary is quite devastating. God could not depend on mankind to make any agreement. Man had no interest in God.
If man was to be saved, find God, and become His children, God had to do it without their help or their agreement because they did not want it. They had no desire to be saved or to be His children. God, in the Garden, made a mighty Covenant with the human race—“I will do it on My own. It is not dependent upon you. I will do it all by Myself.”

The Oath of God

In Genesis, we see something powerful. God announces He is going to do it on His own. It was not dependent upon man wanting forgiveness and repentance. There is no reference to human beings participating in it. It contains one thing: “I will do it on My own.”
God said to the agent of temptation:

“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise His heel” (Genesis 3:15).

Here we see the mighty Holy Ghost announce, “I will!”
God committed Himself, placing the supernatural between the Seed and humanity. He announced the destruction of satan without man’s help or his participation. This is all based on one thing: The Oath of God.
When God said “I will do it…I will use one Seed to destroy the devil forever,” His “I will!” is an oath.
As history of the human race begins to unfold, we see humanity plunging away from God. They walk away from Him and into satan’s camp. Now we see men running away from God to the devil.
What does He do?

And the Angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time out of heaven, and said: “By Myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son—blessing I will bless you and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies. In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because you have obeyed My voice.” (Genesis 22:15-18 NKJV)

This is an amazing promise: “By Myself!”
God sees humanity running away from Him, and He announces His intention to bless them all through His Seed, Christ Jesus!
Men fall and serve the devil and yet God makes a promise: “I will still do it—you will be blessed through one Seed.” This keeps unfolding. God does amazing things. It is mind-boggling!

But this is the Covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: “I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they all shall know Me from the least of them to the greatest of them,” says the Lord. (Jeremiah 31:33-34)

God says to Adam and humanity: “I am still going to get you, save you, bless you, and put My law in your hearts and cause you to love Me. I will do it Myself without your help. This is My Oath!”
God’s action is stunning because it is given to people who have run away from Him toward Satan. Yet He says:

Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh, and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes and you will keep My judgments and do them. (Ezekiel 36:25-27)

Not once does He said, “I need your help.”
It has nothing to do with you. When you run away, He says, “I’m going to fix it. I’m making a promise to Myself and by Myself. You will all know it. I will do it all.”
Nowhere does it say “you.”
And you see “I will!” throughout the Bible!

“I will cause you to love Me!”

What kind of God is this who will cause me to love Him and obey His Word?
God is doing it all by Himself. It is His Oath. “Working out your own salvation” has nothing to do with you. It is letting God work. It is God Himself.
What is your part? Absolutely nothing!
Even more shocking is when God says if He could not perform, He would cease to be God. This is mind-blowing!
God says, “For Me to break the Oath, I would cancel Myself.”
How firm a foundation!
For God to cease you would cease. Everyone would. The promise bound God to fulfill His Oath.
Every cry of the heart of men will be answered because of the Oath!
There is no guilt, no shame. You and I are amazingly loved by God. No man and no devil can change it. You will be blessed. The Holy Spirit will be inside you because of the Oath.

Faithfulness of the Oath

What makes everything work is God’s Oath. It is His faithfulness. God made us out of the dust of the earth and says, “I love you, dust. I will put the Holy Spirit in you, dust, and you will know Me, dust, and you will worship Me.”
Why would God love dust?
All we are is mud:

“And after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God, Whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!” (Job 19:26-27)

In the Resurrection, you will be raised from the dead physically. All of us will be 33 years of age. There will be no babies and no elderly persons. Jesus rose from the dead at age 33, and we are told:

“Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2).

God has been faithful. He is faithful. He will be faithful throughout all eternity!
There are three Hebrew words for faithfulness:

1. Aman—trust and endurance

2. Amen—so be it

3. Amet—truth

Together, these words mean “faithfulness.”
God is forever reliable. He can be relied upon. The outworking of His faithfulness is the outworking of the Oath—“I will cause you to walk in My statutes. I guarantee it by Myself!”
He said, “For I am the Lord, I do not change” (Malachi 3:6).
He is faithful and unchangeable:

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variableness or shadow of turning” (James 1:7).

Variableness means no shadow or turning. When James wrote this, He had seen the sun, moon, and stars.
The planets turn always. On one side there is darkness, and on the other is light. This is very important because one side is always dark when the other side is light. What James was saying is that God has no dark side—no change, no variation. All that He is He was, and ever He shall be!
God is incapable of making a promise and not keeping it because He cannot lie. His Word, His promise, is reality.

Faithful from the Beginning

Jesus was crucified in the mind of God before the foundation of the world. When God spoke it, it was done. History just fulfilled it.
Ephesians 1:4 says:

“He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.” From the beginning, we were “holy and without blame,” it was already done in His mind.

God spoke in eternity past that you are holy and without blame. God says, “You are Mine. It is done.”
You and I are His eternally. We are His righteousness—wise and blameless. It doesn’t mean “to be.” We are! This is the Oath of God. It is His Word even if it takes centuries for it to be fulfilled.
Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Old Testament prophet Isaiah wrote:

So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent. (Isaiah 55:11)

We are told:

“Blessed be the Lord, who has given rest to His people Israel, according to all that He promised. There has not failed one word of all His good promise, which He promised through His servant Moses” (1 Kings 8:56).

The promise is certain:

“O Lord, You are my God, I will exalt You, I will praise Your name, for You have done wonderful things; Your counsels of old are faithfulness and truth” (Isaiah 25:1).

Everything God said about you in the past is done eternally. It’s done! That’s what is meant by faithfulness.

• Faithfulness became flesh.
• Trust became flesh.
• All He said became flesh.
• The Oath became flesh.

God, the Father, representing Jesus, the Son of God, and God the Holy Spirit did it all! They did it without you!
That is the promise that will last throughout eternity:

“Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war” (Revelation 19:11).

Jesus Christ is faithful and true! Our faith is built upon Jesus Christ, and it is totally absorbed in the Lord.

More Than Human Philosophy

We live in a world full of faith based on self-help and positive-thinking motivation. This is not in the Bible, nor based on biblical faith.
The world’s system says faith:

• Is energy that resides.
• Is power, not belief.
• Is power in the belief that forces work, struggle, and state of mind.
• Spotlights our thoughts and changing those thoughts to change your life.

This is not faith. It is flesh. These words are not the words found in Scripture.
Faith is not just repeating the promise by repetition. A Christian believer’s faith is rooted in one’s relationship with Jesus.
It is not directed at the words of the promise. It rests in the One who made that promise. It is not focused on what He said, but it rests on who He is!

Yielding, Not Struggling

Faith is who He is, not what He said. It’s not faith in the words He said, but it is trust in the One who said the words.
As Jacob learned (Genesis 32), faith doesn’t come by wrestling with God, but it comes through finally resting in Him!
God is faithful—He is our truth and our strength. He will carry you when you cannot carry yourself. All you have to do is rest and let Him do the work.
It is not in the Word, but it is resting in the One who says it. It is His character. It means knowing Him—that what He says He does. Best of all, we know that He never lies to us. He is a Man of His Word.
Therefore:

• Faith is knowing Him.
• Faith never forces the hand of God.
• Faith is resting in His hands.
• Faith is surrendering in His hand.

The Gospel is based on the Oath. God’s Oath is what separates us from religion. Religion is based on what you do. Faith is what is DONE. It was fulfilled on the Cross.
It is not do, do, do…It is done! The Oath did it.
Jesus did not say on the Cross, “To be continued.” He said, “It is finished!” No one can add to His finished work on Calvary.
Faith rests in “the done.” It is not us making promises to God. It is us resting in His promise.
It is not a shared effort. We are blameless all because of His Oath. There is no begging when you know the Oath. When you know the Oath, you never have to beg.
The key is not working. It is yielding. It is surrender!
You do not have to do anything. There is no price tag on your faith. It is not what you do. It is resting, trusting in God, and relying on His love. All you do is yield and rest. There is no price. He will write His laws in our hearts and cause us to walk in His statutes.
Therefore:

“Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).

We can surrender to the Lord, who is faithful and who will establish you and guard you from the evil one (2 Thessalonians 3:3).
We can rest in His promise:

“Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:23).

It’s not about you. It’s about Him!
. I will pray that Jesus Christ will bless the work of your faith and love.