Photo by David Brooke Martin on Unsplash
GOD’s promises. They are a vast topic. Fortunately, we will have plenty of opportunity to discuss GOD’s promises in the future. For today, I browsed the word in the Bible. It is very interesting in that it includes many promises GOD makes HIs people starting with Abraham, moving along to the nation of Israel. Some of the promises are found in historic books of the Bible. Some of those promises remain to be fulfilled because we are still waiting for the coming of Jesus as King.
We can rest assured, however, that those promises will come to pass. How do I know? Because all the other promises have come true and they were made by the GOD of truth. He is also a faithful GOD who keeps His promises.
One promise that we don’t often think about is one He made when He gave the Ten Commandments to His people.
“See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil.
If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today,
by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules,
then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.
But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them,
I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish.
You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess.Deuteronomy 30:15-18 ESV
This promise has both a blessing and a curse that goes with it. GOD showed He would keep both sides of HIs promise.
This was a two-edged promise. If they kept His commands and followed after Him, they would prosper and live in this beautiful land He had given them. But, if they followed after other gods and rebelled against Him, life would not go well for them and they would not live in that land long.
As it turned out, they didn’t follow His clear commands. The northern group rebelled against Him sooner than the southern group…and were punished sooner and more harshly. They were totally absorbed into the kingdoms that captured them and are almost impossible to find now. Only the two remaining tribes remain. They paid dearly for their disobedience.
They had the truth available to them that the other nations did not have and they turned away from it. What a sad story. They had such great opportunity. They had such great potential.
But very few of them truly followed after GOD. I don’t say that as someone who knows I would have done differently. The older I get, the more I fear I might have failed in the similar ways like they did. I am so much more aware of the weakness of my own heart. It scares me actually… Except for GOD’s grace, I know that He provided salvation for me. I don’t take it for granted. I realize He wasn’t privileged to have me as His child.
All of GOD’s promises find their fulfillment in Jesus
I found this passage recently. It is a great reminder that all of GOD’s promises find their fulfillment in Jesus. Isn’t it encouraging to know that no matter how weak we feel, our hope is in Jesus who establishes us in our faith and seals us with the Holy Spirit as the guarantee that we belong to GOD!
For all the promises of God find their Yes in him.
That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.
And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us,
and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.II Corinthians 1:20-22 ESV
We no longer need to be overwhelmed by our sin and failure. We just need to repent to those we sin against and to GOD. Not because we have to confess every single sin or we will die!
No, all our sin, past, present, and future has been paid for. We can trust the work Christ already did on our behalf. Jesus has dressed us in Christ’s righteousness and He took on our sin and paid for it on the cross! That is why the cross is so meaningful for every Christian. That is why we have hope…confident expectation based on the person and promises of GOD.
Do you feel overwhelmed today? I realize that our overwhelmedness (don’t know if that is a real word) is not always due to or related directly to sin, but sometimes the combination of past failures, guilt and that nagging voice in your head that is always telling you that all you are doing and have done is wrong. (And it isn’t GOD’s voice.) If He is correcting, He does it kindly and directly. It is part of living in a broken world. for sure.
I often find it difficult to dissect how all those things interact. Only GOD knows and He has paid for all of it. You are forgiven if you belong to HIm. If your feelings of being overwhelmed relate to too many things to do, we will talk about that soon. But for now, you can start asking GOD to help untangle all of it for you.
Write down a list of things that need to be untangled. What needs to happen? Write it all down. That will help. Start praying over that list…and remember who GOD is and find some specific promises of His for your present situation and start memorizing those truths so you have something positive and encouraging to meditate on…even if it is simply the reminder that He is with you so you don’t have to be afraid.
