Dear Church family, yesterday we looked at the promises of God to Abram (Gen. 15). God promised him a future offspring and land despite impossible odds…Abram was old and his wife was barren making the offspring promise impossible. What’s more, the promised land was occupied by other people, making that a perplexing promise as well. Yet Abram believed in the Lord’s promise (15:6), a promise that could only be fulfilled by God alone.
And with this faith in God still intact, Abram questions how God will fulfill His two impossible future promises to him, and God answers Abram with stunning encouragement mixed with a frank prophecy: “you’ll die before experiencing My fulfilled promise and your offspring will suffer as they wait for their promises land.”
Now for us, I want to encourage all of you to hold onto the promises of God and keep on believing in them, both present promises and future ones. The nature of our faith needs to be like Abram’s, to be banking on God to fulfill His promises without any ability of our own to contribute towards their fulfilment. Our efforts are barren to fulfill the promises of God because they’re supernature. This applies to God’s promise of eternal life in Christ (“offspring”), a promise that completely comes through the intervention of Jesus Who died for our sins and rose from the grave (Notice Romans 4:21-25!). But God’s promises extend beyond covering our sins and justifying us; they also extend to future promises such as a new heavens and new earth (“promised land”), new bodies, and no more tears, no more death, etc…(Rev. 21:4). These promises of God can only be fulfilled by God’s supernatural intervention, and we can continue to believe in God’s ability to fulfill them because He’s our Almighty Creator and He cannot lie.
I want to share two promises in Scripture with you that are special to me that I hope you can continue to trust and believe (even in the midst of suffering {Gen. 15:13}):
Romans 8:32- “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?”
Ephesians 2:6-7 – “6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”
These promises convey the fact that we have an incredibly bright future ahead of us because of what God has prepared for us. The same God Who created everything from nothing in Genesis 1-2 is the God Who will make good on these promises. So we can trust that His promise of a brighter future with untold and unthinkable gifts lies in front of us.
So continue to hold onto the promises of God that all find their “yes in Christ” (2 Cor. 1:20)
While your journey is difficult and tempestuous, be sure that you’ll eventually “die in faith not receiving all that God has promised,” (Heb. 11:13 & Gen. 15:15), like Abram, but that’s because God’s promises are so great that many exist beyond the grave.
Keep on pressing on, Church, continuing to trust in the God Who cannot lie even in the midst of suffering and waiting. It’s not easy, but don’t give up. Psalm 119:140 says, “Your promise is well tried, and your servant loves it.” Let’s love God’s promises together and continue trusting them, even while we have questions!
And for confirmation in God’s promises, just look to Jesus, Who is the token of God’s love and power, sending Him to die for our sins and rise from the grave. If God accomplished that for us, how much more!
For an inspiring song to go along with this theme, you can listen to this old song by Santus Real (I’m not sure if you like this style of music, but I love it!):
With love in Christ,
Aaron
