Responding to the Promises of Jesus (Week 6)
2020: A Year of Celebration!
The Promises of God’s Faithfulness!
Key Verses: Lamentations 3:19-27
July 12, 2020 ~ FBC’s 110th Anniversary of Gospel Ministry
Have you ever done something that is contrary to your character or values? To err is human…
Thank God that He, unlike us, does not err in His faithfulness! Today, we discuss one of my favorite promises of God—the promise of God’s faithfulness or in the Hebrew, His חֶסֶד (ḥě·sěḏ)—God’s covenant faithfulness or as translated in Lamentations 3:22, “The Lord’s lovingkindness”. Interestingly, God’s activity of faithfulness flows out of this center of who God is—His perfection. Therefore, God is truthful to His covenant promises. God is faithful in every dealing of justice and mercy. It is impossible for God to not act in accordance with His character. For God to not be faithful to all of His promises is for God to cease being who He is. Unlike us flawed human beings, it is impossible for God to act contrary to His character.
We could spend the next 30 minutes looking at evidence for this truth about God, but let’s instead focus on how we should respond to this truth of who God is and how God acts in history.
Let’s look at Lamentations 3:19-27 to launch our teaching on how we are to respond to the promise of God’s faithfulness. Please remember that as you hear these words that they were written by the prophet Jeremiah as a member of a small remnant of Jewish people left behind after the destruction of Jerusalem and the final wave of forced deportations of the Jewish people into Babylon. Jeremiah calls out to God,
Remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and bitterness. Surely my soul remembers And is bowed down within me. This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. The Lord’s lovingkindnesses [חֶסֶד (ḥě·sěḏ)] indeed never cease, For His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness [אֱמוּנָה (ʾěmû·nā(h))]. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “Therefore I have hope in Him.” The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the person who seeks Him. It is good that he waits silently for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man that he should bear the yoke in his youth.”
This passage teaches us how we are to respond to God’s covenant faithfulness:
- We are to hope in Him!
Psalm 130:7 connects hope with God’s hesed, “O Israel, hope in the Lord; For with the Lord there is lovingkindness, And with Him is abundant redemption.”
Psalm 46:10 teaches us to not put our hope in our own efforts: “Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”
We have more reason to hope than we do to despair. It’s a choice: Hope in Him! Next…
- We are to wait for God!
Isaiah 40:31 proclaims, “Yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary.”
Go and run ahead of God in your anxiety and fear and see what happens. You will only exhaust yourself and be unfruitful in your efforts. Wait on the Lord and He will multiply the works of your hands…
Psalm 131:1-3 intertwines all these concepts, “O Lord, my heart is not proud, nor my eyes haughty; nor do I involve myself in great matters, or in things too difficult for me. Surely I have composed and quieted my soul; like a weaned child rests against his mother, my soul is like a weaned child within me. O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forever.”
This is a key application for my personal well-being and mental health: I have composed and quieted my soul because I do not involve myself in great matters, things too difficult for me. This is the great malady of our technology age—pride in the abundance of information that has caused many of us to involve ourselves in matters that are too difficult for us when all God asks us to do is love the person in front of us as if that person was Jesus Himself. We need to heed the word of God in Psalm 131 and let go of our 21st century pride that we know everything and our opinions are so important. It is literally ripping us apart, inside and out!
Psalm 33:11-22 continues to move us toward a deeper understanding of how we should respond to God’s covenant faithfulness:
The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of His heart from generation to generation. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom He has chosen for His own inheritance. The Lord looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of men; from His dwelling place He looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth, He who fashions the hearts of them all, He who understands all their works. The king is not saved by a mighty army; A warrior is not delivered by great strength. A horse is a false hope for victory; nor does it deliver anyone by its great strength. Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, on those who hope for His lovingkindness, to deliver their soul from death And to keep them alive in famine. Our soul waits for the Lord; He is our help and our shield. For our heart rejoices in Him, because we trust in His holy name. Let Your lovingkindness, O Lord, be upon us, according as we have hoped in You.
Because the biblical mindset of waiting on the Lord is not passive, Jeremiah forms a couplet: “The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the person who seeks Him.”
- We are to seek
“Build houses and live in them; and plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and become the fathers of sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; and multiply there and do not decrease. Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf; for in its welfare you will have welfare.” For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, “Do not let your prophets who are in your midst and your diviners deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams which they dream. For they prophesy falsely to you in My name; I have not sent them,” declares the Lord. For thus says the Lord, “When seventy years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill My good word to you, to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans that I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.”
The key to the promises of God is to respond to them faithfully! There are many promises in the Bible—promises for blessings (life) and promises for curses (death). God is faithful to all of His promises.
In Deuteronomy 4:29-31, Moses said to the Israelites who would live in such a way as to invoke the curses of God upon themselves: “But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you search for Him with all your heart and all your soul. When you are in distress and all these things have come upon you, in the latter days you will return to the Lord your God and listen to His voice. For the Lord your God is a compassionate God; He will not fail you nor destroy you nor forget the covenant with your fathers which He swore to them.”
As Paul said in 2 Corinthians 1:20, “For as many as are the promises of God, in Him they are yes; therefore also through Him is our Amen to the glory of God through us.”
This brings us to the last point for today. Jeremiah calls God’s people to bear God’s yoke from our youth. In other words, to be trained from a young age how to walk in covenant faithfulness in our everyday lives.
- We are to take His yoke!
Let’s turn to Matthew 11:20-28 to listen to this reality in Jesus’ ministry to the Jewish people:
Then He began to denounce the cities in which most of His miracles were done, because they did not repent. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles had occurred in Tyre and Sidon which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. Nevertheless I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You will descend to Hades; for if the miracles had occurred in Sodom which occurred in you, it would have remained to this day. Nevertheless I say to you that it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for you.” At that time Jesus said, “I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight. All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
Jesus was denouncing the Jewish people for their break of covenant with God—for their apostasy. He called judgment down on them which is what we all deserve. Jesus explained this to us in John 3:16-22,
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”
The yoke imagery with Jesus is the same as it was with Jeremiah. You are at a crossroads of judgement—either way God will be faithful to His promise to bless you or curse you based on your choice. Choose this day whom you will serve! God is faithful; that is not in question. The question is: Are you faithful to God?
These are the promises of Jesus! Here is how we are to respond: HOPE—WAIT—SEEK—YOKE!