Our God Has Bound Himself to a Promise

This morning, we're looking at the second part of a new series we've started on prayer. That's a five-part series. And like I said at the start of last week, when we looked at the beginning of the series, a pastor can get up and start talking about prayer or have an application point somewhere in his sermon on prayer, and it always strikes a chord with us. It always convicts us because every Christian feels deep down that they can be praying more or they can be praying in a better way. They can be praying more effectively.

So it's good for us to often come to prayer and to talk about it. It is one of the greatest gifts we have. It is one of the most powerful vehicles we have to commune with God, to celebrate, and to experience oneness with God. This great gift of prayer is so valuable. So it's good for us to again come back to the basics of it, which is what we're trying to do by looking at the reasons we pray. And so the series really is trying to strip back the fundamental aspects of prayer.

Last week, we looked at the first reason we can pray: because we have a personal God who has revealed himself to us. Firstly, through His works—He has created; we exist; there is something that exists around us. He has moved in human history, and then He has revealed himself through His presence. He is someone who can be experienced, who can be known. These are fundamental aspects of systematic theology that we looked at, which enables us, in turn, to do this very practical thing that all Christians will do, which is pray.

We also said last week there is no such thing as a Christian who doesn't pray. Some of us pray heaps, and some of us pray little, but if you are a Christian, you will pray. You will communicate with God. It is impossible for you not to. Today, we're going to look at another fundamental reason why we can pray, why we should pray, why it's a privilege for us to pray, and that is because God has bound himself to His people—to us—with a promise.

And we're going to look at what that promise is. Let's turn firstly, however, to Numbers 14. And this series, as you'll see this morning as well, is not a series where we can jump to just one passage in Scripture and exegete that and exposit it. We will jump through various parts of the Bible because we're trying to see a biblical theology of these aspects, but Numbers 14 is a great passage that will summarise some of the themes we look at this morning. And so it is our text this morning.

Numbers 14:11-19. Numbers 14:11: "And the Lord said to Moses, 'How long will this people despise Me? And how long will they not believe in Me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them? I will strike them with the pestilence and disinherit them, and I will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they.' But Moses said to the Lord, 'Then the Egyptians will hear of it, for You brought up this people in Your might from among them, and they will tell the inhabitants of this land.

They have heard that You, O Lord, are in the midst of this people, for You, O Lord, are seen face to face, and Your cloud stands over them, and You go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night. Now, if You kill this people as one man, then the nations who have heard Your fame will say, "It is because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land that He swore to give them, that He has killed them in the wilderness." And now, please, let the power of the Lord be great, as You have promised, saying, "The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but He will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation." Please pardon the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of Your steadfast love, just as You have forgiven this people from Egypt until now.' This is the word of the Lord.

Foundationally speaking, when God created humanity, He created a basic relationship with us. We are His creatures. But the Bible will tell us that more intimately and more movingly than the fact that God has created us, the reason we can relate back to Him so intimately in prayer is not because He created us, but because He has established a relationship of intimacy with us through something called the covenant. In this passage we looked at, Moses refers to this thing called steadfast love. In the Hebrew, that is covenantal, merciful, gracious love tied back to this promise—the covenant.

Desi and I are currently working through the Marvel series, the action hero movies on Disney Plus, and we've been steadily working through it. We've come to a movie called Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume Two. I don't know if anyone here are involved in that. Desi is already looking embarrassed. But there's a great illustration here of something of what is being talked about this morning.

In Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume Two, Peter Quill, who is the main protagonist, is torn between two fathers—two father figures. On the one hand, he is introduced to a very powerful being called Ego, who he discovers is his biological father, who he's never known. And on the other hand, he has this lifelong captain and mentor, Yondu, a shady blue galactic pirate, who took him in as a very young boy. At the end of the movie, Yondu makes this grand gesture of love to Peter Quill in one of the final scenes. And then he sums up the true dynamic of their relationship when he says to Peter, referring back to this man called Ego: "He may have been your father, but he wasn't your daddy."

What Yondu means there is that it's possible to be someone's physical creator, but the loving relationship over many years is what causes you to know and love someone as Dad. This is what lies at the revolutionary heart of what Jesus then teaches us when He teaches us how to pray in the Lord's Prayer, and we are invited to address God as Father—our Father in heaven. Not simply is God creator Father; He is Dad through a promise, through a relationship. How does that understanding of Jesus in the New Testament come to us? Well, its essence is revealed all the way back at the beginning of the Bible in Genesis, when God makes a great promise to a man called Abraham.

This is a promise we refer to simply as the covenant. Covenant is a solemn, binding, serious promise. God makes a pledge with a purpose. "I want to be your God, and the God of your children, Abraham, and I want you to be My people." It's from this pledge, this promise, that God has moved from being understood as simply creator, now to personal God, even Father.

So we're going to spend some time looking at how this covenant gives us one of the greatest reasons we pray. Firstly, we should understand fundamentally that prayer is grounded in the covenant. The Bible sums up humanity's greatest problem as our fellowship being broken with God. That brokenness has come about through something called sin. In the New Testament, in Romans chapter 1, Paul describes the progressive alienation from God by saying that humankind gave up God, exchanged Him for other gods and idols, and God, in turn, gives up humankind to all the consequences of their sin.

Romans 1:24, 26, and 28—he repeats that: "God gave them up. God gave them up." Human lostness, in other words, consists not only of real guilt, but of alienation as well. That's why Jesus' statement of His own understanding of His mission to earth is summed up so powerfully and beautifully by the words of Luke 19:10—"that the Son of Man came to seek and save that which was lost."

Seek and save. On the one hand, He has come to save us from the wrath of God for our guilt, but on the other hand, He has come to seek us in order to find us and bring us home. The purpose of God starts all the way back in Abraham. God calls this man out of a random people group in the Middle East, and He promises to bless this man Abraham, to make him a blessing to all the nations of the world. And then, in several oath-making ceremonies across Genesis 12, 15, and 17, God makes it clear to Abraham that He is making a relationship with Abraham based on a covenant, based on a promise.

He says things like Genesis 17:7: "I will establish My covenant as an everlasting covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you, for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you." Abraham, in turn, is called to walk before the Lord. It's said that Abraham would manifest a relationship that's been created by God having taken knowledge of him. This relationship is only entered into, simply entered into, by believing the promise. That's where Paul's theology of faith comes in in the New Testament. It is simply trusting this promise, that God will adhere to those obligations.

From that moment, Abraham becomes a man of prayer. From that moment, Abraham becomes a man of prayer, so much so that he is called a prophet of God. You see it when Abraham prays to God in Genesis 15:2 about his childlessness. He refers many years after God's initial promises.

He refers to the covenant and says, "God, You promised a nation from me. I have no children, however. Remember Your promise and give me a child." Later, he intercedes for his nephew Lot and the city of Sodom in prayer in Genesis 18. Even later, Abraham prays for King Abimelech when Abimelech is punished by God, even for the sin of Abraham.

And all of these requests that Abraham brings to God in prayer is tied back to this one thing: "God, You have made a promise to me." From this pattern emerges what is seen throughout all the pages of the Old Testament. Years later, Moses prays to God, like we read this morning, on Israel's behalf, urging God to remember His promise, His covenant to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He dares to argue with God, urging Him to protect His own people, Israel, by keeping His promise. "You are the God of steadfast, faithful love," summed up by that promise.

He says to God in that passage, "What will the Egyptians and the Canaanites think if You annihilate us? If You destroy us, these people that You have delivered from Egypt, time and time again." Exodus 32, you can read the same argument. Deuteronomy 9, Moses makes the same argument. We find these examples of people appealing to God's love, His special covenantal love, in prayer.

So that is the first thing. As inheritors of this great promise, as spiritual heirs of Abraham, we understand fundamentally that our prayer is grounded. It's cemented. It's built upon this promise: "I will be your God. You will be My people."

Not only is prayer therefore permissible because God has bound himself to a people through a promise, but now we can appeal to God to act by asking Him to be faithful to His own promise, which is what leads us to this next point. It's not only built our prayer on the covenant; now it pleads the covenant relationship. There's a certain shape to Christian prayer. There's a pattern, there's a flavour, and a posture to how we pray, and it's essentially tied back to the promise. This is where Jesus taught us, famously, how to pray in the Lord's Prayer.

It's based on the same principles. The relationship that God established in the covenant of grace draws a corresponding devotion from His people. God promises to do certain things to Abraham and his descendants, but Abraham and his children are obligated to keep their end of the bargain through faith and devotion. Yet our response to God in prayer is not a grudging acceptance of His will over our lives. It is an adoring compliance to uphold our end of the relationship.

For those of us who have come to understand how God has been gracious in being the greater, condescending down to the lesser in making these promises—in this promise, a Christian understands that they have a passion for God in realising His great purpose for the covenant. This is why we pray "Thy will be done" in the Lord's Prayer, because we understand what it means to be in the purpose of the covenant. We will want to have God save all those people that He has set His heart upon, not simply because we have a concern for them personally. We have a passion to pray for the lost because it brings God more glory to save them.

Everything we ask for, all our requests of God, is couched in that desire. "God, have Your way. Let this great purpose, this plan for humanity and the universe come to fruition. Let Your will be done on earth as it already is in heaven. Redeem a kingdom for Yourself, God.

Build a magnificent, beautiful kingdom for Yourself." And as the minor partners in that covenant, we submit our desires for His purpose. In our prayer life, there are heaps of promises that the Christian can claim. We can go to the Bible, and we can pray for health because we know that God heals. We can pray for our daily bread because we know that God provides.

We can pray for God to save our family and friends because we know that God saves. But we can only lay claim to any of these promises because of the primary, overarching promise summed up in the covenant: "I want to be your God, and I will make you My people." And so we gladly submit our requests to God with a proviso that granting our requests, whatever they may be, however isolated and personal they may sound, we say, "God, grant those things so that this great narrative may be completed. Your kingdom come. Your will be done."

Now, people may hear this and think, "Well, I never think of it this way when I pray. When I'm asking for, you know, my rent money to be met this week, or when I'm asking for God to please help me with my exams coming up, I never think of it in these grand ways. Why should I pray in the first place, then, when all it is doing is simply accomplishing what God wants to do anyway with His great purpose for us? If our prayers are tied up with God accomplishing His goals, why are we at all involved in this process? Perhaps you've heard it put this way: if God is Lord, if He is so sovereign, if He takes all the initiative and He accomplishes His will in heaven and on earth anyway, why pray? Won't God carry out His purposes without our requesting to do it?

Since we don't know how God will accomplish His plan, would it not be better to leave everything just simply in His hands? Isn't our prayer presumptuous meddling? Getting it wrong, asking for the wrong things when He knows what He wants to do and needs to do." Edmund Clowney, in his book Teach Us How to Pray—a great article he wrote on it—says this: "The plan that God will accomplish is a plan that includes the dedicated participation of His creatures. For this purpose, He has made man in His image and is restoring him in the image of His Son.

As Jesus prays for those the Father has given Him, He is fulfilling the will of His Father. John 17. Our prayers too are part of the great sweep of God's plan for His people. God's sovereignty does not rob history of significance. To the contrary, it is God's plan that gives human history meaning. It is God's plan that gives human history meaning.

We do not know how to pray as we should in light of God's purposes, but for that very reason, His Spirit who dwells in us makes intercession according to the will of God. In other words, we have free and total permission to ask whatever might be on our hearts because if it's broadly a biblical prayer, we can, on the side of believing that it is something the Spirit of God is urging in us to pray for. And God listens to that prayer because He obligates Himself to the promise He's made. Our prayers matter because they somehow build into God's greater purpose for the kingdom. So you can be the most humble Christian, but you should understand that no prayer of yours is insignificant.

Through your prayer life, you are partnering with God's great plan for humanity. That is an awesome way to think about your prayer life. And thirdly and finally, the restoration of prayer found in the New Covenant. So we look at the Old Testament, and we see the likes of Abraham, Moses, David—the Old Testament prophets—pray, and they pray according to this covenant: "God, please remember it.

God, please have mercy based on what You have promised us." And yet the Old Testament keeps giving us this powerful image of how weak humanity is in keeping to its side of that agreement. We should never misunderstand the point of the Old Testament. It makes this point: you and I are Israel. We do exactly what Israel did. We will have done exactly what Israel did if we were in their shoes.

We will break faithfulness with God. We see in Israel how they are punished for breaking their promises and not keeping God as their God. That is all they had to do: keep God as their God. Yet, in idolatry and all kinds of sin, they show that they have walked away from Him. And so, time and time again, God sends these prophets to warn Israel of God's coming judgment, but they don't listen.

Finally, God says to them, "If you won't listen to Me, I'm not going to listen to you." In places like Jeremiah 7, chapter 11, or chapter 14, the epitome of the judgment is found not so much in the exile to Babylon or Assyria. The epitome of judgment is felt when God won't even allow the prophets to intercede on behalf of Israel and Judah. Listen to the heartbreak in this passage here. Jeremiah 11:14: God says to Jeremiah, "Do not pray for this people, or lift up a cry or prayer on their behalf, for I will not listen when they call to Me in the time of their trouble."

That is the heartbreak of the exile. When Moses interceded for Israel based on the covenant, God says here that the covenant has been so shattered by Israel and Judah that His covenant responsibility to hear and act is null and void. He doesn't owe Israel anything anymore. And yet, even in His warranted heartbreak and anger, God will eventually relent with astounding grace. And later in Jeremiah 31, God makes a promise of a new covenant being drafted up.

Jeremiah 31:33: "For this is the new covenant," He says, "that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put My law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they shall be My people." Something new will happen where obedience to God isn't contingent upon wavering hearts anymore—hearts that come and go, believe and don't believe. A time is coming where God will have hearts completely gripped by a desire to know and follow Him.

How will God do this? And what will God do about the punishment that is tied to the breaking of our promise to Him? Well, it comes through one final prayer in the Old Testament. This time, by someone called the Servant of the Lord. Isaiah 53:12: God says, "Therefore, I will give Him a portion among the great, and He will divide the spoils with the strong because He poured out His life unto death and was numbered with the transgressors.

For He bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors." Perhaps the greatest prayer of the Old Testament is this prayer of the victorious Messiah who will intercede for His sinful people. Here we find a prayer bringing to God the assertion that His atoning death will satisfy the punishment of the broken covenant. This mysterious, powerful Servant will bear the sins of many, and in doing so, He will bring a prayer of intercession for those who have broken the covenant. Friends, this is what Jesus did for us at the cross, and it's for this reason that Christians have great confidence in approaching God in prayer because once again our prayers are grounded in God's promise.

We appeal to God's faithfulness in keeping His promise when we bring our prayers to Him. But the New Covenant of Jeremiah, which is better understood as a renewed covenant, not a brand new agreement—because you'll see, if you look at Jeremiah 31 again, that passage we read, it's the same pledge and purpose: "I will be their God. They will be My people."

It's not a new agreement. It's the same one, renewed. But it is new in that God would now ensure that our end of the bargain is kept. He becomes the perfect Israel. He becomes the perfect Man in Jesus.

He upholds the human side of the agreement. He dies the penalty where we would have failed, and now we are free to plead again the covenant relationship. "God, please hear us. Please act on our behalf. Why?

Because You've promised to be our God. Lord, please hear us. Please see us." Isn't it astonishing to think that we have the right to pray with the same boldness as Moses did? To argue with God, to call upon Him to remember what He has promised?

This week, we were all shocked and disturbed by the accident that happened to our much-loved John and Tayo. Sitting with them the following morning after the accident in hospital, I read with them a passage from Romans 8, and we were comforted again by this same confidence. Paul writes in Romans 8:31, "What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?

Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ is the One who died. More than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us?

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?" Paul says no. "For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

If guilt and alienation were the signs of being covenant breakers, Romans 8 is confirming to us that nothing in all creation will ever be allowed to alienate us from God's presence because of our Lord Jesus Christ and His staggering love on the cross. So the biggest reason we pray as Christians is because God has bound himself to us by a promise. And we can pray with great confidence because every single prayer is grounded in that amazing covenant of grace. Every request, every praise, every thanksgiving is said and received in a relationship of obligation, of duty, of faithfulness, and it all belongs to God, who in obligation, duty, and faithfulness will listen and hear us. So we can pray, and we can pray boldly, for our great God is listening and acts on behalf of His covenant people for His great and awesome purpose of building a kingdom that can never be destroyed.

Join with me in prayer now. Lord, we thank You for this framework by which we understand what You have done for us. And once we come to grips with these things and understand what an amazing privilege we have, what a power we have, what access we have to the limitless power and grace and love of God—God, why would we not pray? Lord, You are too wonderful for our imaginations, and Your purposes are so much higher than our ways of thinking.

But we thank You, Lord, that because of Jesus Christ and through His Spirit that intercedes for us, that we can pray and pray boldly, asking audaciously for You to hear and to act on our behalf because, God, You have bound Yourself to us. You have bound Yourself to our success, to our incorporation into this glorious kingdom by a promise that You cannot break. And so, Lord, help us to understand when we pray with good and disciplined minds that we can pray for our health, for our daily needs. We can pray for John and Tayo in their distress. We can pray for those who do not know You because, God, Your glory is at stake, and You are not shy about loving Your glory. Help us and develop in us a love for that same glory, and to see this great and awesome purpose be fulfilled in the passing of history. And help us to understand that even our small and humble prayers somehow build into that great and awesome vision. So You invite us again, Lord, to pray because Jesus enables us.

And in His name, we pray this. Amen.