This study is (eventually!) about how to extract God’s promises from the Bible - how to turn them into prayers and how this will bring glory to Christ, joy to you and inspire your worship. But we have some important ground to cover before we get there. We have to be sure that we qualify to draw on the rich promises of God.
Here are some important Bible passages that are both a foundation for our belief that God in fact HAS amazing, worthwhile and extremely desirable promises for us – and that encourage us to approach Jesus Christ to find them.
Matthew 6. 25 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? 28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Romans 8.28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
John 6.51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” 52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me.
John 7.37 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” 39 Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
It all starts with the promises of God. Everything must begin with what God says that he will do. Creation began that way and God continues to sustain it that way – he is the initiator of everything. We learned last week that all the promises of God are YES in Jesus Christ, so we need to understand from the very outset that these promises are not our promises or commitments to him – they are not even our imaginations of what we would like God to do for us. The promises of God are God’s commitment to lift us up by blessing us (enlivening and enriching us) with every spiritual blessing in Christ (Eph 1.3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us IN CHRIST with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places ). Jesus Christ is the source of God’s blessings to us. Everything of promise, everything of true value, and everything lasting, beautiful, pure, powerful, exciting, satisfying, joyous, restful and glorious is found in Jesus Christ. Only when we find him do we find the life that we hunger for. You will not enjoy God’s promises except by enjoying Jesus Christ. The fullness of God’s promises cannot be had separately from Jesus.
It is deeply tragic that in our natural condition, we human beings are always edging towards happiness and joy but never reaching it. There seems to be a promising glow reflecting onto the clouds just beyond our horizon, but we never quite reach it. In our youth we have a good deal of optimism about what we are going to get out of life as it unfolds in front of us – but when things fail to fulfil that promise, we become ‘de-visioned’ and we begin to settle for less and less of the promise we once hoped for. Our vision shrinks back to short-term amusements. Eventually, our vision is shrivelled up to one narrow, miserable objective: keeping our minds off death! Rest homes are full of spent human beings, with that one objective – to keep their minds off death. This is a tragedy. It is a scandal that the promises of God in Jesus Christ are neglected; the treasure remains unclaimed. The need is there – human poverty, misery, disappointment and lostness – but the willingness and ability to seek the treasure in Christ is not.
There is a simple reason why this occurs. Satan has blinded the minds of unbelievers. (2 Cor 4.3,4)
And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
A terrible blindness keeps men and women from recognising the glory (the incomparable treasure) of Christ (who is the ‘radiance of God’s glory and the exact imprint of his nature’ Heb 1.3) in the gospel (as it is preached from the Bible, demonstrated in the Church and confirmed by the works of the Holy Spirit). This blindness is induced by the ‘god of this world’, elsewhere called ‘the prince of the power of the air’ and the ‘spirit now at work in the sons of disobedience’, the ‘evil one’, the ‘devil’ and ‘Satan’. When our first parents fell from God’s grace into the ridiculous, sinful idea that they could wisely choose their own path and purpose in life, they brought themselves (and us) under the domination of Satan. Once they lost God’s spiritual life they were open to the malicious influence of another spiritual force which brings darkness and blindness so that men and women cannot respond to God. We cannot even see the
You might be a person who has grown up around Christians, perhaps in a Christian family, or at least a church-going one. You learned the Bible stories as a child, and Christian ideas - like giving thanks for your food or praying for God’s blessing on a trip or having a service for special occasions - were all part of your upbringing. But as you got older, these things seemed disconnected with life. They didn’t seem to have anything worthwhile to say to you about going out with girls, what sort of job you should have and how to spend your leisure time. You drifted away from your religion - although it still had the power to make you feel a bit guilty when you broke the rules that you were brought up to believe. Then you meet up with someone or some people who seem to have a very different take on ‘church’ than you. They seem to speak with genuine emotion and conviction about the things they believe; they seem to actually enjoy sharing the Bible, praying and singing to God. This interests you. You wonder if you could ever be like this and whether there might be more to ‘church’ and ‘God’ than what you had previously thought. As you are drawn in amongst Christians, you start to pay attention to what the Bible actually says and it seems to be describing you to you! It sometimes feels as though a mirror has been held up to you and you see yourself as you really are. The Bible seems to bring a lot of things you wondered about into clear focus. But when you go away from church and Bible, back among your other friends who don’t follow such things, you quickly find that you forget about Bible ideas. But something has changed in you. You now don’t find it so easy to leave ‘church’ out of your life and you keep getting drawn back there. And as you pay closer attention to the Bible sharing and teaching, you begin to read some of it for yourself. It begins to disturb you, in the way that it defines people as sinful and separated from God. (You always thought God was ‘nice’ to everyone). You begin to feel somewhat uncomfortable about your own condition. You find in the Bible that it describes all people as anti-God by nature and cut off from him. You are troubled to find that God’s wrath – his judgement – is upon everyone. You are surprised and worried to understand that God is not pleased with your religious efforts and that he is against you. You become more aware of your sinfulness than ever before and although at first you rebel against the strictness of the Bible’s description of your condition before God, you start to feel that this is true. You find you cannot easily brush off this sense of guilt and you feel exposed and caught directly in God’s gaze.
He seems to have uncovered the truth about you and it is very troubling. About this time, you start to really hear and realise the part that Jesus Christ plays in God’s plan to rescue men and women (you!) from your guilt. You hear how his death and resurrection got forgiveness for you and acceptance with God. For the first time in your life, you realise that Jesus Christ is your Rescuer. You feel empty and thirsty for the goodness you lack and you begin to realise that Jesus can meet that thirst and that everyone who comes to him to drink will be satisfied. The Spirit of God is opening your heart to Jesus Christ. He is using the Word of God to open your eyes and ears so you can see and hear what God has prepared for you in Jesus. This is you being born again! You find that the truth about Jesus Christ is drawing from you a deep YES that you never expressed before. This is the YES of faith. You are agreeing with all that God has said about your need and all that he has revealed in Jesus Christ to meet your need. You humble yourself before Jesus Christ and give in to him. You surrender yourself to him and ask him to remake you to be like him. The Spirit of God is affecting new birth in you! Your repentance and sorrow for your sin and the YES of faith in Jesus Christ are the first evidences that you have been born again. You used to be spiritually dead and unresponsive to the information about God, but now you are alive to it and it is food and drink to you. You may not necessarily experience a huge emotional release, but you have let go of your resistance and you sense acceptance with God because you have given over your self to Jesus Christ. This is how a person might be born again.
This cannot happen without your willing assent. You are not born again against your will! In new birth the Spirit of God frees your rebellious will and presents the truth about your lostness to you and introduces you to Jesus Christ your Rescuer. You are free to say the YES of faith in him. You are free to own up to your sin and turn your back on it so you can serve Christ. If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold the new has come. All this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to himself. 2 Cor 5.17,18.
In baptism you ‘act out’ his death, burial and resurrection by being immersed in water and welcomed in the family of God by your brothers and sisters in Jesus.]
At last… back to the matter of God’s promises in our daily lives!
Know this that all God’s promises are in Jesus Christ and he delivers them personally into your life. These promises, being fulfilled in your life daily, are what give you a living hope (that is a dynamic life-enriching hope). 1 Peter 1.3
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
The blessings (promises) of God are not disconnected things, events or circumstances; they are the expression of Christ’s life at work in you, through you and around you!
You need to feed on these promises. You need to browse on them as a goat feeds on the berries, grass and fresh shoots in its environment. You feed on God’s promises by buying them up! When you buy something you make it your own. But in this case, God says we can buy the nourishment of his good promises without money and without price!
Isaiah 55 invites us to come and buy our daily food without cost. That food is Jesus Christ himself.
Finally (!) here is how to extract God’s promises from the Bible for your good. And we had to take this l-o-n-g way around to make sure we understand that his is not an intellectual study – it is done in dependence on Christ – feeding on him:
As you approach the Bible:
- Think about your life – current attitudes, anxieties, challenges, opportunities, enemies, relationships etc…
- Read your Bible.
- Read it with your heart and mind open to Jesus Christ – talk to him about it as you read – tell him you are open to his teaching and willing to hear what he has to teach you about your life.
- Think hard about what your read – go to other parts of the Bible that speak of similar things and see what one part says about another. The Holy Spirit will teach you, but you must engage your mind!
- Notice what your reading says about what the Lord will do.
- Turn these promises (because if the Lord says he will do it, then it is a sure promise) into prayer – ask God to do what he has promised. If you are not sure how to do this, go to Luke 1 (especially verse 38) and see how young Mary turned a promise into a prayer. Or go to Daniel 9 and read how Daniel turned a promise into a prayer.
- In this way, your life will become a showcase of God’s promises in action and you will show off the magnificence of Jesus Christ – you will display his glory.
- In this way, joy will be released in your life – joy that supersedes the negativity of worldly life.
- You will have your own experience of God’s grace that will inform and inspire your worship.
You have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever. “ And this word is the good news that was preached to you. 1 Peter 1.23-25
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