The promises of God (1)⤒🔗

If you would pick up a pencil or pen and cross out all the promises in your Bible, you would end up with a very thin Bible.  What is the Bible without promises?  Obviously, there is more in the Word of God.  In it we find commandments and warnings.  We will never be able to separate the various elements from each other.  Remember that the whole of Scripture is God-breathed and is inspired by the Holy Spirit (2 Timothy 3:16).  We must be careful not to simply take out of  the Bible what pleases us and ignore the rest.  Our prayer should be “Establish my way and steps in all of your Word.”  Isn’t all of the Word a lamp for our feet and a light on our path?

That doesn’t change the fact that faith focuses most of all on the promises of God.  Calvin expressed that aptly in his Institutes of the Christian Religion:  “Although faith confirms that God is true in everything [therefore also in his commandments and warnings, P.B.], yet faith begins with the promises; it rests on those promises and ends in them” (Inst. 111.2.29)

Our Heidelberg Catechism confirms this in Lord’s Day 7, question and answer #22, where it asks, “What then, must a Christian believe?” and answers “All that is promised us in the gospel...”

If you then, with your pen or pencil would underline all the promises in the Bible, you would quickly find that you are not able to count them all!

So the question for this morning is: How are we to associate with those promises?  What are we doing with all that the Lord promises us in his Word?

You can also turn this around:  What do those promises do to us?  Has the Word of the promising God become the power of God for salvation for us?  Are God’s promises a light on our path for us, a light which shows us the direction we may and must go in good times and in bad, in health and sickness, indeed, in life and in death?

However, we will deliberately leave the title as is: association with the promises of God.  For, exactly in that way of associating with God’s promises, yes, with the Promiser himself, those promises will show their power in our lives in the broadest sense of the word.  Indeed, we have already sung about that from our earliest years:

“I, LORD God of truth, 
I, from Egypt, freed you.  
Open wide your mouth; 
put your trust in me. 
Know that I am he,  
who will richly feed you.”

(Book of Praise  Ps. 81:9)

We know that!  But, do we do it?  Are we exercising ourselves in that discipline?

In order to try to gain insight together as to how we must and can do that, we will investigate the topic: “Association with the promises of God.”

Four things demand our attention:

1. God’s promises – an unearned gift
2. The Word of God’s promises – the answer of our faith
3. Prayer:  digging into the gold mine of God’s promises
4. Wait on the Lord – the fulfillment of God’s promises

1. God’s promises – an unearned gift←↰⤒🔗

We may call the Lord “the God of promise.”  He already made himself known in this manner in paradise.  Exactly then, when Adam and his wife fled from God because they had not believed him in his Word; there, where the smoke of the gunpowder of the war against God still hangs in the air, the unexpected word of God’s promise resounds: “I will put enmity between you (the devil) and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”  Genesis 3:15: the mother promise, or rather, the mother of all succeeding promises.

A while later, that gracious beginning with Adam is deepened when God says to Abraham, “And I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:2-3).

In the course of the centuries, these promises grow into a stream of promises, first of all for Israel, and, since Pentecost, for all peoples.  Peter says it in this way on the day of Pentecost: “For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” (Acts 2:39).  Thanks to the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom all God’s promises are yes and amen (2 Corinthians 1:20).  In all those promises it is God himself who comes to us.  He comes to fallen people; he seeks those who are lost; out of grace he shows the poor his help for salvation.  Out of his great mercy, the holy, majestic God seeks communion with sinners, people such as you and I.  As it states in Psalm 25:14, “The secret counsel of the Lord is for those who fear him and he makes known to them his covenant.”  This does not mean, in the first place, our hidden communication with the Lord, but his friendship with all who fear him.  It originates with him.

Isn’t it true that, of ourselves, not a single one of us seeks him?  But, as the God of many promises, he approaches us, with many promises for this life and for the life to come. 

For this life, he promises his care and protection, his leadership and wisdom, his strength and comfort, forgiveness of sins through the blood of Christ, renewal by the Holy Spirit, fruit and spiritual growth – we hope to return to this later.

For the life to come. he promises the eternal inheritance, the new Jerusalem, the new heaven and the new earth; the resurrection of the body, the eternal, complete joy in the Lord.  I am just pulling forward promises in order to be able to summarize them: the Lord promises all we need in order to live comforted by him and in order to die saved by him.

Yes, the Lord promises himself!  He, the Promiser, is more than all his promises; he is everything!  An elderly sister in the Lord, aged 94, said it to me in this way: “The Lord is with me, now I have everything!”  What an astounding wonder it is, that we have an association with God who comes to us with the most wonderful and precious promises, a God who gives himself, for he did not spare his only begotten Son, but gave him up for us all (Romans 8:32).  An unearned gift!  And for what kind of people?  People who meet some sort of criteria?  People who distinguish themselves from others?  No! People who fell away from him, enemies, godless people.  People who by nature have no place for God and his Word, people who have earned only one thing - the curse, eternal death, being separated in hell eternally from this great and good God!  Once you see this, you no longer take this for granted.  It is frankly shocking when you meet people who regard this as the most commonplace thing in the world, that God promises them so much, people who claim a right to God’s promises.  The astonishment is missing.  For this reason, the state of actively working with the promises is also missing.

But, what a comfort for people who are helpless, who have gained the insight that, from our side, nothing is possible.  God gives himself in his promises.  At your baptism, they were placed on you, by name.  Already then, the gracious God inclined himself towards you -   not because you were so good, but because he is so good.  God’s promises are given and are addressed to particular people who have not earned them.  God grants them to us for Jesus’ sake.  They are written in blood, paid for, one by one, with blood.  The apostle Peter writes, “by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises” (2 Peter 1:4).

The promises of God (2)←⤒🔗

2. The answer of our faith belongs with the Word of God’s promises←↰⤒🔗

The triune God does not give his promises without conditions.  We can not accept them in order to investigate them and then lay them aside.  That is what we do with a letter that we receive, which, during a meeting, is acknowledged, but nothing further is done with it.  If we deal with God’s promises in this manner, we will, with the precious promises, still perish. 

God’s promises are given so that we believe all that God has promised in his Gospel (John 20:30-31).  Heidelberg Catechism, question and answer 22, previously mentioned, points to the summary of all those promises, in the twelve articles of our catholic, undoubted Christian faith, the Apostles’ Creed.

Someone compared the twelve articles with twelve ropes, let down from heaven to earth, ropes to which each sinner may attach himself or herself.  In the sea of life, we find ourselves in the greatest need, the need of our being lost and, related to that, also all sorts of needs in every day life.  Now God opened the heavens and let down his saving cords of promise to the earth.  Also all those ropes of God’s promises invite us, yes, entice us to fasten ourselves to those cords and wind them around ourselves.  The Lord entices with his promises!  They are not high and unreachable above us, but, like a lasso, encircle us.  I may grasp those cords by saying: “Lord, I believe; help me in my unbelief;  I can not do anything else, I am in peril and I see your saving cords.  Because You call me to grasp them, I may and can do that – through the power of your Spirit.  And when I can’t, then I call, ‘Oh, give me the help of Your Spirit!’”

From this image you will have noticed that believing is not a walk in the park or floating in a little boat under a shining sun on a smooth sea.  It is: holding fast to the promising God in the storm of his wrath and in the vicissitudes of life.  It is : complete surrender to the Rescuer, Jesus Christ, with hide and hair, with body and soul.  It is trust that the Holy Spirit, through the gospel of God’s promises, is working in my heart, that God has given me all his good thing. (1 Corinthians 2:12).

That trust in the only true God, who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ, causes me to break with anything that would draw me away from him.  The gods of the time can not save me, nor money or technology, nor my own self.  Out of this yielding in trust to the promising God, out of the reliance on his promises, I will also begin to seek the fulfillment of his promises in my life.  It becomes my heartfelt longing, more and more, to be renewed after his image.  Living out of God’s promises begins in the heart and is revealed in the way we live our lives!

Exactly, in the path of dedication to him, the Lord steadily reveals more promises, and the fellowship with him and the blessing that comes from him grows richer.  The Lord himself entices us to expect much from him.  A few examples are Malachi 3 where the LORD calls his people to return to him.  They have strayed.  They have not kept the commandments and ordinances of the Lord.  They brushed God aside, for example with the leftovers of their income.  They refused to tithe, as the Lord had commanded (Leviticus 27:30-32).  However, in his love for his people, the Lord says: “Return to me and I will return to you.”

Give me your heart and your life and watch and see what I will do.  We read that in Malachi 3:10: “  And thereby put me to the test [require proof from me], says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.”

Rain was the same as blessing, overflowing blessings.  So, the Lord says here: Test me to see if I will keep my Word.

You will notice; at the same time the Lord tests his people.  Is your trust in me strong enough that you will do it?  Will you risk it; seeing nothing, yet believing, because I have promised it?

Think also about James 4:8, where, in a similar manner, wise words sound forth: “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.”  James is saying that whoever, in sincerity, repents and returns to the Lord and seeks his face will notice that the Lord fulfills his promises.  He is not a man, that he should lie (Numbers 23:19).

Let’s be honest; we often want to have something tangible in our hands before we believe – think of Thomas!  But also today, the Lord asks for the simple faith and trust of our hearts and a loving surrender to him.  In this manner, his glorious blessing becomes our portion.

The Lord Jesus also said that with other words in John 14:21:  “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me.  And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”  What does this mean?  Christ reveals the answer in verse 23: that the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ will dwell in me, so that the bond of love steadily strengthens and I, more and more, learn to live out of love and display the fruit thereof in my life, to his honour.  The Saviour points in John 15 to the expressive image of the true vine and the branches: “Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”  (John 15:5)

How does that work, that abiding in him?  That has everything to do with his Words, his commandments and his promises.  Read in John 15:7, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”

When we receive and work with the words of Jesus in faith, it has huge implications for our prayer life.  That brings us to:

3. Prayer: digging into the goldmine of God’s promises←↰⤒🔗

Like the two wings with which a bird flies, faith as answer to God’s promises and prayer grounded on the promises of God belong together.  What is prayer actually?

I will pass on to you the beautiful description given by Calvin: “ Prayer is a certain communication of people with God, in which they, having entered into the holiness of heaven, speak to him personally about his promises” (Institutes 3.20.2).  Or to express it in the words of Psalm 138:1-2: “I give you thanks, O Lord, with my whole heart; before the gods I sing your praise;  I bow down toward your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness.”  We approach the throne of grace to plead for that which he has promised us.  This brings us to a very practical point - the connection between the reading of Scripture and prayer.  How important it is, also in the business of family life, to set aside time every day for personal Bible study, with the prayer in your heart, “establish your way and word in my steps; speak, Lord, your servant is listening.”  Following this, after reading and contemplating on the Word, approach God in prayer with the Word that you read.  It may be that the piece that you read clearly revealed to you the rotten nature of a certain concrete sin, for example, the sin of the tongue (James 2).  Then such sins must be confessed in our prayer before the Lord: “ Lord, forgive me, the carelessness of my lips and purify my heart and lips through the blood of your Son and renew me, also in this point, by your Spirit”.

Or, perhaps the Lord gave us an assignment.  We read, for example, in 2 Thessalonians 3, the call of the apostle: “Finally, brothers, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored…,”   and in this way the Lord has bound the workers in his service and the service of his Kingdom, worldwide, onto our hearts.  Then we are called on that day (but not only on that day!), to give special attention to those people in our prayer.

Or, we may read the challenge of the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 13:5: “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith.  Test yourselves.”  Then, following this, we will ask in our prayer, “Search me, O God, and know my heart!  Try me and know my thoughts!  And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” (Psalm 139:23,24) 

Then consider the wide expanse of God’s promises!  Can you count them?  Praying is digging out the treasure of God’s promises in order to be enabled to receive them.  Point out the promises in your prayer.  You may approach the Lord in order to request what he has promised.

We find countless examples in the Bible of this pleading on God’s promises.  A fellowship of faith with the promises of God never means that I have God’s promises and therefore I have reached completion.  No, you have only begun.

Let’s look at David, in 2 Samuel 7.  The Lord promised him great things:

• “The Lord will make you a house.”
• “I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.”. 
• “And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me.  Your throne shall be established forever.” 

What is David’s response?  He humbly bows himself before the Lord, small before the magnitude and goodness of God, and... he approaches God using his own Words: “And now, O LORD God, confirm forever the word that you have spoken concerning your servant and concerning his house, and do as you have spoken” (2 Samuel 7:25).

Or, think of Daniel.  In Daniel 9 we read how Daniel was reading the scrolls of the prophet Jeremiah.  There he discovered that God had set the time period of exile at 70 years.  Daniel does not say at that point, “ O, so we now know that; I have again read a section, and it will happen as it was decreed.”  No!  He kneels before his God and we read in Daniel 9 of a fervent prayer, in which Daniel confesses guilt for himself and his sinful people of which he is one, but in which he also reminds the Lord of his mercy and faithfulness in the past.  He confesses that, in the people themselves, there is never reason for God to hear them, but the reason lies in the LORD.  He pleads on God’s glorious Name; he points out God’s mercies, of which God’s Word speaks, and of which the history of God’s people is full.

Does the Lord see this in us? Does he see that we are praying for ourselves and for our people, pleading on the basis of his Name, and of his work in history?

One more example; this time from the New Testament: the Lord Jesus has promised that he will return speedily, a wonderful promise for the church, his bride.  What do we do with that promise?  Do we say, “We’ll see.  We’ll just wait and see?”  On the last page of the Bible,  I hear the bridal church praying, and it is the Holy Spirit that gives her the words of this prayer on the ground of Jesus’ promises:  “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.”  This is what the Bible means with the word, pleading, holding on to the Lord, climbing up to the Lord on the stairway of his promises.  God hands the key of his promises to us and thereby opens up access to his throne for us.

The promises of God (3)←⤒🔗

For which things may we and must we pray?

Our catechism gives us a beautiful answer to that question: answer 118: “All the things we need for body and soul, as included in the prayer which Christ our Lord himself taught us.”, the Our Father.  Noteworthy in this prayer is that it seizes on God’s own Word.

For example, when we pray: Hallowed be your Name, we do that because the Lord himself has made his Name known as a Holy Name and a Name full of promises: 

• The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous man runs into it and is safe. (Proverbs 18:10); and
• “And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Acts 2:21)

Whenever I take these pleas upon my lips, I beseech the Lord for everything I personally need in order to hallow his Name, in all I am to do and in what I have to turn away from.  For that I need his Spirit.  He will cause me to know him and to bear fruit.  That Spirit is also promised me by Jesus: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13)

Does it accuse you, that the field of your life lies so dry and barren?  Are you bearing so little fruit?  The Holy Spirit, whom you receive upon prayer, will cause you to bear fruit in your family, in the congregation, in your relationship with others.  Don’t you know, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22)?  Delve into those promises in your prayer, also then, when you, in particular circumstances, need those fruits so urgently and notice that you, in yourself, are unable to attain them.  Tell the Lord honestly when you are depressed and the joy of faith evades you: “Lord, on the basis of Your Word, grant me a renewed life perspective and joy in You.  And, when it is so difficult in my marriage and the joy has gone out of it, grant me, grant us both the fruit of love and faithfulness, that you have promised.”  You don’t know anymore how to handle a fractious child?  You are lacking the wisdom to nurture this child?  You need to make decisions, but you can’t see your way forward clearly?  You are confronted with suffering in your life, with sickness, with bereavement of a loved one - with 1001 questions for which you have no answers?  Confess your own minuteness, your weakness and your foolishness, and place your finger on the promise: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him” (James 1:5).

Do your sins accuse you?  Did you, once again, make a mess of things?  You may pray: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”  You may ask that, because the Lord promised it: “the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanses us from all sin”  (1 John 1:7).

Did you just come to faith and are you longing for spiritual growth?  The Lord has promised – and it is simultaneously a command- “I am the vine; you are the branches.  Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) 

Bearing fruit, growing in the faith, that is becoming smaller yourself, more dependent; continuously feeling a greater need to kneel and learn to think of God as more and more great; approaching him more and more on the basis of his Word.  This is not to our own greater glory – that has to diminish and die in the fellowship with Christ, but that he may be more and more glorified and his image may become more visible in us.   “By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit” (John 15:8).  “Lord, isn’t that what you promised?  Not just a fruit here and there, but much fruit!  Act, Lord, as you have promised!”

Do we pray in this manner, involving the Lord in all our activities and issues, in order to be able to walk in his way:  “In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths” (Proverbs 3:6)?  No, the Lord has not promised a path of roses.  He has promised a path where everything must serve our salvation and we become partakers of his holiness  (Hebrews 12:10).

It is a path, where we no longer attach such great importance to what other people think of us, but where one thing matters: “It is the Lord who judges me.” (1 Corinthians 4:4).  This causes our prayer to change.  Formerly, it was often a list of our own desires; by living close to the Lord and according to his Word, his Name, his Kingdom, his will become preeminent.  Then, the Lord will supply all that I need to live out of that conviction.  He has promised that.  This brings us to the boundaries of prayer.

The Lord doesn’t just give us what we want, even though we often think that that would be good for us.  We also need to remember this when we face the questions of health and sickness.  The Lord has not promised that every sickness will be healed upon prayer.  He does promise to give his grace in answer to prayer, so that we will be able to carry on, in such a manner that his power is made perfect in our weakness. (2 Corinthians 12:9)  I am thinking about a sister in our congregation who is quite young and seriously ill.  She told me, just lately, how she prays: “Lord, let my sickbed by a witness of your grace, because it is not about me, but about the glorification of your Name”.  And the Lord hears that prayer!

Think large when you think of God.  Let his promises be the guidebook for our prayers.  Then we will be praying in Jesus’ Name.  With this we progress to our last point.

4. “Wait upon the Lord”: the fulfillment of God’s promises←↰⤒🔗

The Lord Jesus said in John 16:23 “Truly, truly I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you.”  Praying in the Name of Jesus, that is sheltering yourself in your prayer behind the Person and the work of the crucified and risen Saviour.  It is praying in such a manner that Jesus’ words resound in our words, what he desires and Who he is.  Only God’s Spirit can teach us to pray in such a manner, by leading us into the truth of all of the Word and making us mindful of it, causing us to recall  all that Jesus said (see John 14:26).

Such a prayer has imprinted on it our remaining in him, and with his Words remaining in us.  In this connection, it is fully valid: “Therefore, what your (God’s) Will is, you will desire and it will happen for you.”  Filled with his Words, I will not want anything but that which he wants!  This is something totally different from a kind of “magic faith” whereby I will push a button and subsequently receive from the prayer automat all that I desire.  No, when I am renewed by his Spirit and led by the Spirit, my prayer will become a prayer according to his will.  The apostle John says in his first letter “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.” (1 John 5:14).

God does not fulfill all our desires, but he does fulfill all his promises.  Only one thing is important; that our prayer is identified by a faithful surrender to the Lord Jesus, as God has taught us to know him in his Word. 

What if I have an issue or problem for which there is no promise?

We can say two things about this.  When we ask for things that are in direct opposition to the Word of God, we can count on that request not being heard.  James 4:3 says, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” 

It is also possible that we, seeking God’s will, in all honesty ask for certain things, even though we do not find particular direction for our requests in the Bible.  Then we may leave the answer to the wisdom of God.  Also then, we may submit ourselves to the Lord.  Then we will notice that his peace will enter our hearts, even if we don’t receive precisely that which we asked for.  The Lord encourages us with the words of Philippians 4:6-7: “do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made known to God….”    And then? Do things then always proceed exactly as we possibly imagined it?  No, but this happens, “ And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

We must also not forget to thank the Lord when he has fulfilled a particular promise in our lives and has heard our prayer!  He so deserves it!  The Lord can, at times, hear our prayer in a way different from what we had thought, and also, at times, at a different moment than what we had counted on.

Psalm 27 says, “Wait for the Lord.”  Prayer is: keeping watch on the foundation of God’s promises.  “But as for me, I will look to the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me” (Micah 7:7).

Until the great Day dawns and all God’s promises are totally fulfilled; not one of his Words will fail!

Think very humbly about yourself, and very loftily about God.  Be a miner in the gold mine of God’s Word, in order to turn, in prayer, with what you have found, to his throne – humbly and freely, amazed and thankful, for “He grants the request of all who fear him; he has never put aside their prayer.”

“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen”  (Ephesians 3:20,21).