“Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;)
Hebrews 10:23
Human beings are notoriously unreliable. We make promises we are sometimes unable to keep. Wisdom would have told us not to make such promises in the first place! Worse yet, some, most notably the overpaid career politicians in the western world’s top-heavy bureaucratic circus, make bold promises they haven’t the slightest intention of keeping. We’ve seen a lot of this kind of thing in recent years. God wants us to know with certainty that He doesn’t operate this way. The morally-perfect God of the Bible makes good on His promises, even the hard to believe ones. God warned Noah that the entire world would be covered in water. Truly He spoke “of things not seen as yet” (Hebrews 11:7). The claim was so fantastic that in all the world only eight people believed and acted on it. Doing so meant the difference between life and death. God told Abram that his descendants would serve taskmasters in a foreign land for 400 years but would later be set free to receive the land of promise (Genesis 15:13-16). In their bitter bondage, the oppressed Israelites no doubt began to lose hope. When the fullness of time had come, according to God’s schedule and not that of man, God liberated His people. After a series of stupendous supernatural sign miracles and judgments, the LORD made good on His promise (Deuteronomy 26:8). At the dawn of human history the LORD promised that the Seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s (Satan’s) head. The promise of a woman’s seed must have seemed preposterous to the ancients, who saw man was the one who provided the seed in procreation. The ancients regarded the woman’s womb as the “garden” into which the seed was deposited. How strange this promise must have seemed to them. What’s more, God had promised a Messianic Deliverer Who would be at once human and finite, and yet divine and eternal (Isaiah 9:6; Micah 5:2). With a completed New Testament before us, we understand that the virgin birth of Jesus and His redemptive work on the cross fulfilled these mysterious Old Testament promises (Matthew 2; Colossians 2:14-15; Hebrews 2:14). Thoughtful reflection on these things ought to strengthen our confidence in the promises God has made to us. He promises that the world we live in will not always limp along as it does, racked with pain and under the control of wicked men in high places (Psalm 2; Isaiah 11:1-10; Romans 8:18-25; Revelation 21-22). Things are going to change, and we are going to change also. At long last we will be like the Savior who rescued us from the wrath to come (1 John 3:2). May His promises not only comfort us, but encourage us to walk worthy of the Lord who loved us first.
God bless,
Pastor John
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