This is week number four on our series
on the attributes of God. To recap a little bit, we began with a God of Celebration,
a God of Second Chances, and last week was a God of Justice. Today, I have the
privilege of telling you that we also serve a God of promises. We serve a God
of promises.
Perhaps to be more accurate, we serve
a God of covenant. There is a difference. A promise is something like when a
child says, “I promise I’ll clean my room,” or when a cop pulls you over for
speeding and you say, “I promise I’ll never do it again,” or when your boss
gives you a deadline and you say, “I promise I’ll get it in on time.” Promises,
for the most part, really aren’t necessary. They are simply stating that you
intend to do something you should probably do anyway. Usually they claim that
you will have good behavior or that you’ll perform a good deed or obligation.
A covenant is when you go out of your
way and make a bold statement about your commitment to someone or something. A
lot of you have made covenants. If you have ever gotten married, marriage is a
covenant. You are promising to love, honor, and cherish your spouse until you
die. That is a covenant. If you have ever been baptized or confirmed in the
church, you are in a covenant relationship with the church. You have promised
to serve Jesus through the church. That is a covenant you have made. If you
don’t remember what you have promised in those vows, they’re written down in
the front of the hymnal, you should check them out sometime. Because they are
not something to be taken lightly.
In the same way, God has entered into
a covenant with us, his people. His promises to us are many times covenants.
They carry a lot of weight. And you know, there is a lot floating around out
there about what God’s promises are and a lot of people have made a lot of
money selling books to people claiming that God promises that wealth and fame
and power are available for everyone! They say things like, “God promises that
he will make you wealthy. How will God make you wealthy? Buy my book and find
out!” You buy the book and start reading it and it says, “Write a book telling
people God wants to make them wealthy. Everyone will buy it and you’ll be
rich.”
Seriously, there are some major
misconceptions out there about what God does and does not promise his people.
So let’s clear some of that up this morning. First, God does not promise us
wealth. A book came out in 2000 that was called “The Prayer of Jabez.” Many of
you may have read it. The basic story behind it is that a little known man in
the Bible named Jabez at one point in his life prayed that God would bless him,
and God did end up blessing Jabez in the form of wealth and a long, happy life.
A man read this, decided to capitalize on it, and told the world that if we
pray the same prayer, the exact same thing will happen to us.
The problem is, God never tells us
that he will bless us with wealth and a long, happy life. It is a great prayer
to pray, but God does not promise to always give us a “yes” answer to our
prayers. Sometimes, God says no, or wait. It’s like when a child goes to their
parents and asks for a new toy or a raise in their allowance. If that child is
a good and faithful child, many times a parent will say yes. That doesn’t mean
it’s going to work for every child! Every situation is different. Sometimes
they toy that is asked for is too expensive, it might harm the child in the
long run, or the child is undeserving of a reward.
In the same way, God knows what is
good for us and what is not so good for us. God knows that if I pray for a
million dollars and he gives me a million dollars, that money will probably do
me more harm than good. He knows that granting me a Ford Shelby Mustang
convertible might inflate my ego. Sometimes God blesses his people with money
and wealth, but not every time it is asked for. That is not a promise of God.
Similarly, God does not promise us
that we will even be able to maintain the status quo. You might think, “Well,
I’m not asking for great wealth. I just want to be ‘middle of the road.’ Middle
class. That’s not too much to ask for.” Maybe it is. God doesn’t promise us
that we will at least be middle class! We seem to think it is a given. If
Christians ever slip below that into a poverty level, we get all upset at God
and say, “Woah! Where’s the money God? What’s going on up there?” God never
promises we’ll be middle class! He never promises we’ll be able to maintain the
status quo.
The next two are sometimes even harder
on people. God does not promise us that we will find a spouse. Again, a lot of
Christians think that’s a given. Actually, if anything, many times God steers
us the other direction. Contrary to what the Davinci Code says, Jesus never
took a wife. The Apostle Paul says that it’s better not to get married if you
don’t have to. But for whatever reason, we have this stigma in the church that
people should get married and we think that God must have promised that it
would happen. That’s just not the case.
On the same level, God does not
promise us children. That can be really hard sometimes. I have a good friend
who is a pastor in Louisiana, and he and his wife have been trying for some
time, but it just don’t seem to be in God’s plan for it to happen that way. So
they’re beginning to discuss adoption, and it seems like they are going to be
really blessed in that way. But God doesn’t promise children.
Basically, to sum it up, God does not
promise and easy life. He does not promise that trouble will avoid us. In fact,
he says the opposite. Jesus says, “In this world, you WILL have trouble!”
Bummer. Things are not always going to go well. Times will be tough. Financial
problems will come. People will get sick and die. Tragedies will happen. People
will be mean to you. Things won’t go your way.
But I want you to think about this:
what if God did promise all those things? What if God promised that everyone
who is a Christian will have money, long life, happiness, no tragedies. Life
will e perfect for a Christian. How difficult would it be to have faith in a
God like that? How much faith would you really have to have to serve a God who
was basically a genie in a bottle, granting your every wish? Would you worship
God, or the stuff he gives you? What would be your motivation for serving God?
You know, in the early church, they
knew that serving God didn’t mean wealth or long life or happiness. They knew
that serving God would lead to one thing: death. Being a Christian meant you
were on the run and if you were caught, you’d be killed. But during that time,
Christianity grew exponentially. Christians were like cockroaches: you squash
one, and 20 more show up. They couldn’t be contained.
What was causing this growth? Why were
they serving God if it wasn’t for wealth, happiness, long life, or even the
status quo? Why were they serving God if they knew it would lead to their
death?
They were serving God, because they
knew the things that God really had promised them. Jesus had promised them,
“Anyone who tries to keep their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life
for my sake will find it.” In other words, you can try to hold on to your life
and make the best of it, but if you do that, you’ll be missing the point of
what life is all about. You only find what life is all about if you turn your
whole life over to Christ to the point that you are willing to lose your life.
That doesn’t mean that he requires that all Christians die for him, but it does
mean that he requires all Christians to give their lives to him. And in doing
so, that’s when you are blessed.
God wants to bless us, we just don’t
understand what a blessing is anymore. A blessing is not what you say before a
meal, a blessing is not what you say when someone sneezes, and a blessing is
not generally wealth. Generally, when God blesses someone it means one thing:
it means God brings that person closer to him. That is what a true blessing is:
getting closer to God. Psalm 67:1 says, “May God be gracious and bless us and
make his face shine upon us.” The Psalmist is saying, “I want to be blessed,
God, so show me your glory.” I want to be blessed, God, so come close to me.
Why? Verse 2 continues, “that your way may be known upon the earth, your saving
power among all the nations…let all the peoples praise you.” So what is a
blessing? Being brought closer to God, that more people might be able to see
the glory of God and worship him. Now THAT’S a blessing.
And God does promise to bless
everyone. In Genesis 12:1-3, God tells Abraham in a covenant that all people on
earth will be blessed through Abraham and his offspring. And this is why the
genealogies in the Bible are so important: because that promise is carried all
the way through Abraham’s offspring to a young couple named Mary and Joseph,
who become the earthly parents of Jesus Christ, through whom all people truly
can be blessed.
How are all people able to be blessed
through Jesus? It is all summed up in one short verse in John 14:6. Jesus says,
“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except
through me.” Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. Think about it, aren’t
those the three things that people are still seeking today? Aren’t those the
three big questions? “Which way am I supposed to go with my life?” Jesus says,
“I am the way to go.” “What is real? What is the truth?” Jesus says, “I am the
truth.” “What is the meaning of life? What is life all about?” Jesus says, “I am
the life.” And he goes on to say that there is a greater place than this earth,
and through him, you can go there.
Remember, I told you one of the
promises Jesus makes to us is that in this world, we will have trouble! But the
second half of that promise is when he says, “But take heart! I have overcome
the world!”
Do you remember the illustration of
the string stretched from
In Acts 1:8 he tells us that as
Christians, we will receive power through the Holy Spirit here on earth. We are
never left alone. He says, I will never leave you nor forsake you. Jesus will
never turn his back on us, and will never leave us alone. That is a promise,
and it can be trusted.
There is a promise that we are still
waiting on as followers of Christ, and that is the promise of his return. We
know that someday, Jesus is going to come back, and everything on earth will be
made right again. Now, I’m not going to say much about this promise, except to
say this, I don’t know when it will happen, only that it will someday happen.
It could be today, it could be tomorrow, it could be ten, twenty, or a hundred
years from now. I don’t know, and frankly, I don’t think that it matters.
Here’s what matters: someday it will happen, and I want to be ready. Being
ready doesn’t mean that I’m canceling my retirement plan because I think it
will happen before that time, being ready means that I am living every day as
if it is my last, and that means I’m spending my time trying to improve my
relationship with God. Because of this promise of the return of Christ and the
promise that God will bless us and the promise that Jesus is the Way, Truth,
and Life, and the promise that Jesus will never leave us or forsake us and the
promise that in this world we will have trouble, but Christ has overcome the
world; because of all of these promises, we MUST alter the way that we live. We
must live as children of promise.
What does that mean? Well, for
instance, if we believe that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, we need
to stop looking elsewhere for the way to go, real truth, and the meaning of
life. If we believe Jesus and his promises, then we need to start acting like
Jesus IS the way, truth, and life. If we believe that Christ has overcome the
world, then we need to stop acting as if the world has some sort of power over
Christianity, as if they can delegate how we worship our God. And if we believe
that God is going to bless us, we have to stop looking for fulfillment in the
stuff of this world.
We serve a God of promises, and his
promises, his covenants towards us, can be trusted. The question is, do we have
faith enough to trust in him? Do we have faith enough to live as though his
promises are true? As we sing our closing song, maybe today is a good day to
start living as if you believe what you say you believe. Maybe today is a good
day to begin standing on the promises of God as if God will actually do what he
says, and you can stop relying on yourself and this world to find happiness and
fulfillment in life. Maybe today you need to ask God to give you the faith to
truly believe in Him.
Van Buren United
Pastor Dan Metzger