God's Promise

One of the things I've struggled with when I was a young Christian, a new Christian, was the idea of the promises of God. I heard the theme often that we have to trust in God's promises to us. We have to hold onto them. And I would struggle with the concept of this, especially, you know, I had questions like, are these promises especially for me? Are they particular to me?

Were these promises those, you know, audible voices in a dream or something like that? Or were they the promises that God would make through prophecies in those difficult to understand passages in the Bible? Like, when we talk about depending on the promises of God, you know, that old hymn, trust in the promises of God. What does that mean? How does that look?

And it wasn't until one day that an old, wise preacher explained that the entire Bible, the entire Bible is one big promise. Or it is formed up of many little promises. You see, every aspect that makes up the Bible, in its nature, is a promise. Because every aspect requires us to believe. Every aspect requires us to believe, and therefore it is promissory in nature.

For example, the Ten Commandments. We think of them as a command, but they're actually a promise. If you obey these commands, these ways that God has laid out for human existence, if you obey them, the promise is you will have a healthy, blessed, happy life. The stories of the Old Testament come with promises because it shows the nature of God. It shows His character.

It shows that He is powerful. The stories of the Old Testament show that He is in control of human history and that He loves and cares for people. Now these are promises that we have to either accept or reject. Even the gospel, or the message of Jesus Christ is a promise. We have it summed up on this wall.

Whoever believes that Jesus Christ was sent, whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. That is a promise. But then the second question I wrestled with is how do we respond to these things? How do we respond to these promises? Do we simply say, okay, well they exist, we acknowledge them, we sort of give it a tick in our minds, or does it require some sort of response from us?

Does it change our life in some way? This morning we're going to look at a moment where God laid out a promise, a magnificent promise. And then we will see some of the steps He explained was part of His promise to the people. Let's have a look at Deuteronomy 1, the very first chapter in the book of Deuteronomy. And we're going to read the first eight verses of that.

One of the earlier books in the Bible, and it's also part of the story of the Old Testament. Deuteronomy 1:1. These are the words Moses spoke to all Israel in the desert east of the Jordan. That is in the Arabah, opposite Suph between Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazaroth and Dizahab. It takes eleven days to go from Horeb to Kadesh Barnea by the Mount Seir road.

In the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month, Moses proclaimed to the Israelites all that the Lord had commanded concerning him. This was after he had defeated Sihon, king of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon, and at Edrei had defeated Og, king of Bashan, who reigned in Ashtaroth. East of the Jordan, in the territory of Moab, Moses began to expound this law saying, the Lord our God said to us at Horeb, you have stayed long enough at this mountain. Break camp and advance into the hill country of the Amorites. Go to all the neighbouring peoples in the Arabah, in the mountains, in the western foothills, in the Negev, and along the coast to the land of the Canaanites and to Lebanon, as far as the great river, the Euphrates.

And then our text this morning. See, I have given you this land. Go in and take possession of the land that the Lord swore He would give to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and to their descendants after them. We see, first of all, God said to His people, you have stayed long enough at this mountain. A year had been spent from the time, if you remember the story, from the time that Israel had left Egypt, had been radically taken out of Egypt, set free from four hundred years of slavery, and got allowed to leave Egypt to go and worship God, get to know God at what was called Mount Horeb.

A year had passed since that time, and they were still at the foot of the mountain. And they'd been spending time in that wilderness there. When God was finished with them at that point, when God had said, okay, you've spent enough time here, He commanded them to break up their encampment in Horeb and to start marching straight to the border, to the land of Canaan, which is called the Promised Land. Now the promise of this Promised Land was six hundred years old. In Genesis 12, the first book of the Bible, God swore to Abraham that He would give His children, His descendants, this amazingly fruitful, beautiful land, a land that was considered to be flowing with milk and honey.

It was just a haven to exist in compared to the desert of Egypt. To your offspring, God said to Abraham, I will give you this land. And then God, in Genesis 26 verse 3 says it to Isaac, Abraham's son. He says to him in verse 3, stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you, and I will bless you. For to you and to your descendants, I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath that I have sworn to your father Abraham.

God affirms this promise. And then we see six hundred years pass, and four hundred out of those six hundred years were slavery for those descendants in Egypt, nowhere close to this land. And then we come to this point in verse 8. Deuteronomy 1 verse 8. And the people have been taken out of Egypt, out of four hundred years of slavery.

They learn who God is for the first time in generations. They know who Yahweh is. And God says, see the promise. See, I have given you this land, in verse 8. Four hundred out of the six hundred years was Israel spent in slavery, slavery to the Egyptians.

But then, not even then, God had given them this, and now God says, guys, I've brought you this far. You must remember this promise to you. You must see that it's possible. Six hundred years had passed. People had forgotten that this would happen.

People thought, well, it's probably just an empty promise, and now they were here. God's word would not disappoint. There's a story of a man called Thomas Andrew Dorsey, and if you're a jazz fan, a jazz music fan, you'll know that name. He grew up in Atlanta in America. He was a Black jazz musician, and in the nineteen twenties, he gained a certain amount of fame as a composer of jazz.

But at one point, he decided to go over from jazz to Negro spiritual songs. And some would argue that jazz has come out of that, in the first place. But in 1926, he went on to focus on spiritual music. In 1932, so a few years later, when he had made that decision, it was the deepest trough of the depression years. The nineteen thirties Great Crash of the stock market led to the Great Depression. And hard times had come on for this Mister Dorsey.

As a musician, he didn't have much to offer people that couldn't afford the luxuries of music. He was just trying to survive the depression years as a working musician. But in 1932, at this deep moment, tragedy struck, and his pregnant wife died very suddenly. And in this really deep angst, he wrote this song with the words, "Peace in the Valley" is the song's name, with these lyrics. Precious Lord, take my hand.

Lead me on and let me stand. I am tired. I am weak. I am worn. Through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light.

Take my hand, precious Lord, and lead me home. This song is actually sung by Elvis, I discovered, and Elvis sings it as well. But in the middle of that, when he had lost his wife, he wrote these words. Now Dorsey had heard the promise of God that He would care for His children, that He would love His children. Dorsey had heard that God had prepared a place for His children and that He would lead them there, a place called heaven.

And in his song, he knew that he could appeal to this promise, and he could pray that God would lead him there personally, like a father taking the hand of his child. God could give him the strength as well to stand up in this deepest pit of despair. God would give him the strength to go on. Friends, God said to a nation four hundred years into slavery, here is the promise. See it.

See it. Remember that I've made this promise to you. Oftentimes, God's promises are like the stars. The darker the night, the brighter they shine. Six hundred years had passed.

God had still kept His word. So see the promise of God for your life, the promises that God contains for us in His word. God says to Israel, see, I have given you this land. Then he says, the next part here, he says, there's more to it than just seeing. God tells the Israelites that they must now enter the Promised Land.

See the Promised Land. Now go in and take possession of it. Verse 8 literally says, I have set the land before your faces. It's right there, guys. It's you can see it.

It's right there. It's before your faces. There's no obstacle to this promise anymore. No man or animal is going to stop God's people from receiving this promise. God would make sure that it would happen.

God would go about showing them that no matter what obstacles could come, God was going to bring them across that land safely. See the Promised Land, now enter it. Listen to these three two verses though before this. This is the amazing thing. Who was going to do this for them?

Who was going to allow them into the Promised Land? It was going to be God. It wasn't going to be their strength. It wasn't going to be their wisdom. It wasn't going to be their expertise.

The one that was going to allow it to happen was God. Verses 3 and 4. In the fortieth year on the first day of the eleventh month, Moses proclaimed to the Israelites all that the Lord had commanded concerning them. This was after he, who is God, had defeated Sihon, the king of the Amorites. Who had done this?

Who had protected them all this way? Not Moses and his great strategy and his great general war general attributes or the great army of Israel who were just a bunch of bricklayers. It was God who had protected them. It was God who had conquered their enemies, and it would be God that would bring them into the Promised Land. He had sworn to Abraham, their forefather.

He had sworn to Abraham that He would give this land to them. And that oath, friends, meant that God actually swore against His own character that it would happen. So God's promises to His people, God's promises to us are virtually obligations He imposes upon Himself. They are not hopeful sort of things that we do. Oh, I promise son, I will buy you a Nintendo gaming system, or you know, I promise that we'll go to the beach on Saturday, or whatever.

They're not empty sort of hopeful things like this. These are obligations that God imposes upon Himself. And this is the amazing thing. There is no higher authority than God Himself. There is no higher authority for God to make a promise than God Himself.

If God makes a promise, it will happen. Hebrews 6:18 says that this is true for two reasons. Firstly, God can't lie. God, who is perfect, God, who is holy in Himself, cannot do anything other than the truth. He cannot do anything other than the truth.

And the second thing is God is unchangeable. The theologians call it the immutability of God. God doesn't change. He is the same yesterday as He is today as He will be a hundred years from now. God cannot change, and God cannot tell a lie.

So that when He makes a promise, it is not some hopeful sort of thing, some vague sort of thing that may happen, may not happen. It will happen. There is no higher authority than God Himself. If I make a promise to Quibi, the justice system will hold me accountable for delivering that promise. That's how contracts are enforced.

If I fail to carry through with that promise, Quibi can go to a higher level of authority, which is our magistrate's office. And he can claim that this contract wasn't followed. If that fails, he can go to an even higher authority and he can go to the high court. And if that fails, he can go to the Supreme Court. God is the highest authority.

There is nothing higher than Him. So His promises, by nature, will stand. They are obligations that He imposes upon Himself. And since He cannot lie because it's sin, and since He's immutable and unchangeable, His promises are always true and will always be fulfilled. So not only must we see the promises of God in our life, we must believe its truth.

We must believe its truth. We must take those little steps of faith. God's promise is that it is better for our relationships if we don't involve ourselves in sex outside of marriage, something that's very controversial. If we believe that that is a promise for our health and for the healthiness of our relationships, then we do it. Because God has made that promise, and we believe that that doesn't change whatever the culture says.

God promises that He is in control. So despite our tumultuous and often error-prone decision making, the bad motives that we use in making decisions, we still believe and we still trust that God will have His way, that God will still control what happens in our lives. God promises of a hope beyond our own, of a heaven, of a paradise. God promises the resurrection and the redemption of our lives, so we believe that when we enter into this promise, that it will radically change the way we live our lives. It will radically infuse hope into us.

So don't simply see the promise. Don't simply see the promise. Enter the promise. Obey it. Take hold of it.

Remind God of it. Remind yourself of it. And that leads us to this next point. Verse 8. See, God says, I have given you this land.

Go in, enter in, and now take possession of it. Take possession of it. Just to enter the land was not enough for Israel. They had to possess it. They had to grasp it.

They had to cultivate it. They had to make it a part of their life. Wholeheartedly dwell in it. They had to own it. God's promise was fulfilled when Israel would take hold of the Promised Land.

Not simply see it, not simply just take their first step into it, to make it their own. God had saved them from slavery. He had provided for them in the desert. He had led them and protected them there. But what happened?

When they got there, they saw the Promised Land. They even entered it by sending some spies in to go and check it out. But they didn't possess it. They came back and they said, the tribes there are bigger than us. There's more of them.

They've got cities that are built up and fortified with giant walls. We cannot do it. Our slaves are no match for their warriors. And so a journey that literally would have taken them eleven days to complete took them forty years. Because God had to take them back and say, okay guys, well you obviously don't believe me.

You don't believe I'm dependable, you don't think I'm trustworthy. I'm gonna have to show you that I can look after a nation in complete desert, no water, for forty years. And God sent them water from a rock, and God sent them manna from the heavens, and for forty years, God sustained a nation of hundreds of thousands. And it took Israel forty years of wandering in the desert before they realised that God was capable of ensuring His promise would be true. And isn't that how we are sometimes?

Romans 8 says this amazing promise to us that in all things, God works for the good of those who He has called and who He loves. God works all things to the good of those who love Him. Why don't we trust that? Why don't we believe that when it comes to the need for God to deliver us? When it comes to that depth of despair or that moment of anxiety, why don't we believe that?

John Wesley, famous great preacher, evangelist, just an amazingly powerfully used man. He writes often in his diary about his life and his ministry. And in one of the sort of condensed versions of this, I'm not a hundred per cent sure of the source of this, so take it with a grain of salt, but I believe this is sort of a condensed version of his earliest journal entries or diary entries. He writes about the start of his ministry and how hard it was. He felt very called by God to proclaim the gospel, to be a man who would be a massive influence in England in a time where revolution was literally at the door's edge.

He felt very strongly that God had called him to preach the gospel, and that he would be preaching to thousands of people. But his earliest diary entries read like this. Sunday morning, May 5, preached at St Anne's Church, was asked not to come back anymore. Sunday PM, the night service, May 5, preached at St Anne's, deacon said get out. This is a man called to preach to thousands of people.

Sunday AM, May 12, next week. Preached at Saint Jude's, can't go back there. Sunday PM, May 12, preached at Saint Jude's out again. Sunday AM, May 19, preached at somebody else's. Deacons called a special meeting.

Sunday PM, May 19, preached on the street, get kicked off the street. Sunday AM, May 26, preached in the meadows, chased out of the meadows, out of the grass by a bull that was turned loose during the service. Sunday AM, June 2, preached at the edge of town, got kicked off the highway. Sunday PM, June 2, preached in a pasture, 10,000 people came to hear me. Amazing.

In fifty years of his ministry, after a very rocky start, John Wesley had travelled over 300,000 kilometres with no car, wrote thousands of letters, and preached more than 40,000 sermons, sometimes to congregations or groups of people of over 20,000. We may be sitting here this morning wondering how on earth things will work out for us. And not to sound too cliche and not to sound like some bad televangelist, but God does have a purpose for us. It starts with us seeking Him out, understanding how life altering His promises are to us, how much He loves us, how much He is in control of our lives. Here are a few practical things for us to consider because sometimes this might be hard to understand.

Here's some practical thoughts. God will often use you simply where you are. God will often use you simply where you are because that's where He has placed you. Where you work, where you go to school, where your kids go to school, where you live, who your neighbours are. God will often use you simply where you are.

God will often use your particular gifts. He may not ask you, perhaps probably not, He won't ask you to be the next John Wesley. If He hasn't created you with a big booming voice or an extroverted nature, there's no point in trying to be something that you're not. That's not to say that God doesn't stretch us and doesn't challenge us.

I never thought that I'd be preaching. I don't think of myself as a public communicator at all. And God obviously changes and has a funny sense of humour and changes people's lives, but we have to we also have to understand that God has given us abilities, that God has given you your personality, and there's no mistake about that. God doesn't give you something to take it away or to overhaul it or to change it. So we have a set of spiritual gifts, and we have a personality to use.

God will often use His church. That's the other thing as well. Sometimes we think we need to do this on our own that God makes a promise to us or God, you know, thrusts us into a situation, and we forget that we are in a community for a reason. And we think we have to take on the whole world. We have to bear our burdens ourselves.

We have to change human lives ourselves. We have to it's not true. God has given us these people around us for a reason. The church as a whole is far greater than the sum of its components. What the church can do together is far greater than what we could individually ever try to accomplish.

So in seeking to fulfil or seeking to enter and grasp the promises of God, seek how that works in relation to the church. Get involved in the church. Seek out ways to serve. Seek out ministries to support. Seek out ministries to start.

So God will often use you where you find yourself, when He promises certain things for us. He will often use you and your gifts and your personality, and He will often use His church. God said to the nation, people of Israel, see the promise. Enter the promise. Now take possession of that promise.

Live in it. Make it a part of who you are. Ultimately, we can trust even these words because we have seen one of the greatest promises fulfilled for us in Jesus Christ. God made a promise at the dawn of human existence, a promise which has endured for longer than any other promise in the world. And that promise was that God would restore a humanity, a people, a creation loved and desired to be with.

A creation that fell from Him, that rejected Him, and He made a promise that He would restore them to Himself. And friends, from Genesis, that first book of the Bible, Genesis 3:15, God says, I'm gonna make a way. I will send someone who will make this right. And through the aeons, God's oath to restore humanity ticked away like a golden thread through these other amazing stories interwoven. God finally sent someone that would lead us home.

God finally sent someone that would come and hold our hand. Thomas Andrew Dorsey wrote in his song that God would send someone for him, and He was called the promised one, Jesus Christ. God had made a promise to save the world, and Jesus Christ, His death and His resurrection, is our greatest assurance that God's promises never fail. They may take time. They may take time, but they never fail.

If you doubt all other promises of God, if you doubt His existence, if you doubt His ethics or His morals, believe this one at least, that Jesus Christ was sent to bring us eternal life and eternal salvation from a distancing from God that no one can survive, that no one would want to be a part of. You know what happened many years after Israel had taken possession of that land, had lived in it, had started cultivating it? At the end of that life, Joshua, their next leader after Moses, on his deathbed said this in Joshua 23:14. Listen to this. Joshua writes, well, says to Israel, I'm about to go the way of all the earth, meaning I'm about to pass away.

But you know with all your heart and soul that not one of all the good promises the Lord God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled. Not one has failed, he says. Friends, God doesn't fail us. He cannot fail us.

It would go against His nature to fail us. He will never leave you. He will never forsake you. He has fought battles for you like He fought battles for Israel. You have stayed at this mountain long enough, God says.

You have doubted long enough. You've prepared long enough. You've built up the courage long enough. Now, see the promise. Enter the promise and take hold of this promise.

Live with it. Let's pray. Oh, God, we need to hear this. God, we need to be assured of this. Lord, we need to go back and read our Bibles.

We need to go and hear Your voice. We need to go and see how You've acted in the past. Thank you, Lord, that Your word, the entire Bible, is a promise. Lord, we hear from it that You are not one to forsake. We hear that You are not one to show anger or hatred, at least not for long.

Lord, we see that You are a God of immense grace and immense mercy. A God of justice, yes, but a God who is seeking restoration. Father, we pray that our lives may be comforted by this. Wherever we find ourselves, Father, in the green pastures, in great places, we have the trust and the assurance, Lord, that You are able to bless us there, that You can give us peace and comfort. And Lord, really, when we do count all our blessings, we realise how blessed we are.

But for us, Lord, whether we are there now or whether we will get there in the future, let this promise, let this truth remain, Lord, that You are a God who cannot renege on those promises, who cannot fail on those promises. Father, wherever we find ourselves and whatever immediate promises come to mind, Lord, give us the courage to enter into them, to take possession of them, to stand upon them, to remind You of Your faithfulness to them and to us. And Father, thank you ultimately for Jesus, the promised one, the one who from the beginning of time, at least human history, Lord, was promised to us when we rejected You and when we failed to live in a loving relationship with You. Thank you, Lord, that even then, You knew, and You had a plan, and You had a promise and a purpose. Father, I pray that that may also be our greatest hope and our greatest assurance that You will look after us.

And thank you, Lord, that You have looked after us and given us eternal life. In Jesus' name, we thank you. Amen.