Standing on Promises

For Reading: 2 Peter 1:1-11

"He has given us his very great and precious promises." (1:4)

It is one thing to accept the faithfulness of God as a clear biblical truth; it is quite another to act upon it. God has given us many great and precious promises, as our text for today puts it, but do we actually count on them being fulfilled?

We have to be careful that we do not hold God to promises he has not given. I have seen a good deal of heartache suffered by Christians because someone encouraged them to take a statement from the Word of God, turn it into a "promise," and urged them to believe for it to come to pass. Then when nothing happened, they became deeply discouraged.

One woman told me that many years ago she had taken the words found in Acts 16:31 - "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved - you and your household" - and claimed them as a promise. When her husband and son died unrepentant, she was devastated. I pointed out to her that even God cannot save those who don't want to be saved, and that the promise given by Paul and Silas was for the Philippian jailer, not anyone else.

There are hundreds of promises that God has given in His Word that we can claim without equivocation. Someone who has counted all God's promises in the Bible numbers them as being over 3,000. That ought to be enough to keep you going if you lived to be a hundred. Be careful, however, that it is a general promise you are banking on, not a specific one.

Prayer:

Father, I have Your promise that You will guide me into all truth, so my trust is in You that You will give me the wisdom to discern between a promise which is general and one that is specific. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Further Study:

Heb. 1:1-12; Heb. 13:8; 2 Cor. 4:18

Why is Jesus so dependable?

Where do we fix our eyes?

The Need to Know

For Reading: Hebrews 10:19-31

"Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful." (10:23)

The Bible is a veritable mine of information on the fact of God's faithfulness. More than 4,000 years ago He said: "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease" (Gen. 8:22). Every year furnishes us with fresh evidence that He has not gone back on His Word.

In Genesis 15:13-14, God declared to Abraham: "Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and ill-treated four hundred years. But... afterwards they will come out with great possessions." Did that happen? Exodus 12:41 says: "At the end of the 430 years, to the very day, all the Lord's divisions left Egypt."

The prophet Isaiah predicted that a virgin would conceive and bear a son whose name would be Immanuel (Isa. 7:14). Centuries later the prediction came to pass. In Galatians 4:4 we read: "But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman."

I wish I had the space to take you through the pages of Scripture and show you how faithful God has been to His Word. But you have a Bible for yourself; study it. Read it to know God. This is the basis of our confidence in Him. And this is why the Bible fairly bulges with this great and gripping truth. The more of God's truth we pack into our souls, the better equipped we are for the road that lies ahead.

Prayer:

Gracious and loving Father, the more I learn about Your nature and character, the more I want to know. Just these glimpses I am getting set my soul on fire to know You more intimately. Take me deeper, dear Lord. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Further Study:

Mal. 3:7; Psa. 102:27; Psa. 103:17; James 1:1-17

What did the Lord declare to Israel?

How did James put it?

Great Faithfulness

For Reading: Psalm 36:1-12

"Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies." (36:5)

How wonderful it is, in an age where unfaithfulness abounds, to focus our gaze on those Scriptures that point to the trustworthiness of our God. The one before us today is quite wonderful, but consider also these:
"O Lord God Almighty, who is like you? You are mighty, O Lord, and your faithfulness surrounds you" (Psa. 89:8).
"Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash round his waist" (Isa. 11:5).
"If we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself" (2 Tim. 2:13).

Can't you just feel the energy flowing from these Scriptures, buttressing your confidence in God? For God to be unfaithful would be to act contrary to His nature, and if He ever was (we are only speculating because He could never do so) then He would cease to be God. Focus again with me on the text at the top of the page. We are told God's faithfulness extends to the skies. This is the psalmist's picturesque way of expressing the fact that far above all finite comprehension is the unchanging faithfulness of God. Everything about God is vast and incomparable, including his faithfulness. He never forgets a thing, never makes a mistake, never fails to keep a promise, never falters over a decision, never retracts a statement He has made, and has never breached a contract. Every declaration He has made, every promise He has given, every covenant He has struck is vouchsafed by His faithful character.

Prayer:

O God, how great Thou art. Great in power, great in majesty, great in love, great in mercy - great in so many things. But above all You are great in faithfulness. How I rejoice in that. Amen.

Further Study:

I Cor. 1:1-9; Heb. 6:18; I Pet. 4:19

What did Paul assure the Corinthians?

What is it impossible for God to do?

Our Trustworthy God

Deuteronomy 7:7-20
"He is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations." (7:9)

God is utterly trustworthy in all He says and does, and this is the rock-bottom reality on which everything in the universe depends. In an age when so much unfaithfulness abounds, how good it is to realize that we have One who will never let us down, never have to apologize for failing us, and never go back on His Word.

Am I speaking to someone who has just discovered unfaithfulness in a marriage partner, or experienced the break-up of a relationship because a person you trusted did not keep their word? It's a sad moment when we get a revelation of the inconsistency of the human heart. But we need to look into our own hearts also, for none of us can claim complete immunity to the sin of unfaithfulness. We may not have broken a contract or violated the marriage covenant, but we have been unfaithful to Christ in other ways - to the light and privileges which God has entrusted to us, perhaps.

How refreshing it is, then, to read today's text and focus our gaze on the One who is faithful at all times and in all things. We may let Him down, but He will never let us down.

A chorus I learned as a young Christian comes back to me when I am tempted to doubt the faithfulness of God:
He cannot fail for He is God,
He cannot fail, He pledged His Word,
He cannot fail, He'll see you through,
He cannot fail, He'll answer you.

Prayer:

Gracious and loving God, what inspiration it brings to my soul to realize that of all the things You can do, the one thing You can't do is fail. May the reality of this be the pavement on which I tread this day and every day. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Further Study:

I Kings 8:54-61; Psalm 89:1-8

What did Solomon testify?

What did the psalmist promise to do?