His Exceedingly Great and Precious Promises

Last night in Katie and I's small group the subject of God's promises to us came up and it was an occasion to bring up some things that I have pondering lately. The essence of saving faith is in trusting Christ and Him alone for your salvation from sin and God's judgment. Trusting anything else, even Jesus plus something else is not saving faith, but is belief in a different gospel which will ultimately damn those who believe it (Galatians 1:8,9).

Trusting Christ means trusting that He will bring us into the Kingdom of God both now and in glory. It's trusting in God's goodness, love, faithfulness, grace, compassion, etc. toward you. You, if you believe in the Christ of Scripture, are one of God's dear children. He loves you (Eph. 3:14-21), He cares for you (1 Peter 5:8), He is Abba Father to you (Romans 8:15). He will give you mercy and grace to help you in your time of need (Hebrews 4:14-16), and He will ensure your perseverence in the faith and bring you into His eternal kingdom (Jeremiah 32:40, Hebrews 10:14, Revelation 21:1-22:5). And the list goes on.

All of these the Apostle Peter calls God's exceedingly great and precious promises...(2 Peter 1:4a NKJV). It's vital that we as believers grab a hold of these and bank all of our hope on them in Christ Jesus.

The people of Israel in the Old Testament unfortunately failed to do this in a key moment. You may remember that Israel was poised to enter the promised land and sent the 12 spies in for reconaissance. Ten came back and gave a bad report saying that it would be too hard and that ultimately, God could not be trusted. They may not have said that outright, but that was the attitude of their hearts.

And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the children of Israel; from every tribe of their fathers you shall send a man, every one a leader among them"...And they returned from spying out the land after forty days...Then they told him, and said: "We went to the the land where you sent us. It truly flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. Nevertheless the people who dwell in the land are strong; the cities are fortified and very large; moreover we saw the descendants of Anak there..." And they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out... (Numbers 13:1,2;25-28;32a NKJV)

And even though Joshua and Caleb encouraged the people to trust God and go, the majority won out and the children of Israel would wander in the desert for forty years until that generation died out (with the exceptions of Joshua and Caleb).

Israel failed to trust God's promises and goodness toward them and they paid the price. Interestingly, this generation of Israelites is put up as an example of unbelief that we should not follow(Hebrews 3:7-19).

Trusting God and His promises is not easy. Our flesh is continually trying to pull us away from God (Galatians 5:17). The deceitful promises of sin, and its passing pleasures that war against the soul (Hebrews 3:13; 11:25; 1 Peter 2:11) are continually around us. Yet we know that nothing will ever separate us from God's love (Romans 8:38,39), and that God will never let us be tempted beyond what we are able to bear (1 Cor. 10:13), and that God will ultimately see us through to the end, never letting us fall away(Jeremiah 32:40), and bringing us to eternal glory (Romans 8:30).

Trust in God's promises toward you in Christ Jesus today and pray that I will do the same.

-Christian