Talk 8 Different ways God speaks to us through the Bible – Part Two
Last time we saw that God speaks to us through the Bible by teaching us:
- What to believe and how to behave
- What to expect by giving us examples from the lives of God’s people
Today we will see that:
He encourages us by the promises he has made
We read in 2 Peter 1:3-4 that
God’s divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.
Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
And notice the repetition of the word promise in the following verses in Hebrews 11:
- By faith Abraham went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.
11.By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised.
- These all died in faith, not having received the things promised but having seen them and greeted them from afar…
- By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son…
- …who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mounds of lions…
- And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised…
But what exactly are these promises? In this section we’ll look at:
- How to identify God’s promises
- How to understand God’s promises
- How to receive them
How to identify God’s promises
Let’s begin by considering the basic meaning of our English word promise. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as follows:
- A declaration made to another person with respect to the future, stating that one will do, or refrain from, some specific act, or that one will give some specified thing.
- Divine assurance of good or blessing.
Notice that the first part of the definition relates to the future. When we make a promise we’re saying what we will or won’t do in the future. Statements about what we have or haven’t done in the past, although sometimes referred to as promises, are probably better understood as solemn assurances. I can’t promise you that I did something yesterday. If I say, ‘I promise you I did…’ I really mean ‘I assure you that I did…’. And that’s where the second part of the definition fits in. God’s promises are his assurance of his blessing. God is eternal and his assurances of blessing relate not only to the future but to the past and present as well. Consider the following:
- Do not steal
- Love one another
- Christ died for our sins
- The blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin
- God is love
- I will come again
A and B are commands. They are not promises. C, D, E and F are statements. C is a statement about the past. D is a statement about the present. E is a statement about the eternal nature of God. But, if we limit our understanding to the first part of the dictionary definition, only F is a promise because it’s a statement about the future.
However, the second part of the dictionary definition defines promise as divine assurance of good or blessing, and according to that definition C, D, E and F are all promises. We can trust confidently in them because they are statements God has made that assure us of his blessing. And we can be sure about them because of God’s integrity and his ability. And it is through them that we have become partakers of his divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). So, although it would be wrong to think that every verse in the Bible is a promise – some are commands, some are questions etc. – we can be sure that, wherever God assures us of his blessing, that is truly a promise he has made.
How to understand God’s promises
Once we’ve identified something as a promise that God has made it’s important to make sure that we understand it correctly. We need to look at the context and see who the promise was originally made to. We need to ask what it meant at the time it was made and how, if at all, it applies to us today.
The guidelines we gave earlier on how to understand the Bible correctly apply as much to God’s promises as to everything else in the Bible. So, please, don’t just lay hold of a Bible verse and claim it as yours just because you like it, or because it makes you feel good. Make sure that you’re understanding it correctly. But that brings us to the important question as to how the early Christians understood the word promise.
So far we’ve been looking at the way the English dictionary defines the word promise. But, of course, the New Testament was not originally written in English. It was written in Greek. The Greek word for promise is epaggelia (pronounced epangelia). And if we’re to fully understand the significance of this word and how to apply it to our lives today we need to look at how it is used in the New Testament.
A detailed examination will not be possible within the scope of these talks but in a series of podcasts I made in 2021 I showed how NT writers use the word promise to refer to major themes that relate to our salvation rather than to individual Bible verses. These include:
righteousness, sonship, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the promise of an inheritance, victory over death, eternal life, and the promise of Christ coming.
It’s by reading the Bible and understanding and trusting these promises that we grow in our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. These are the promises that Paul is referring to when he says:
For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20).
This does not mean that we can claim any and every promise in the Bible, as some Christians mistakenly believe. It means that all God’s promises – those that relate to our salvation – find their fulfilment in him. Christ IS the fulfilment of all God’s promises. There’s a sense in which, if you have Christ, you don’t need the promises, because you already have them in him! You don’t need to ‘claim’ them! All you have to do is trust them! But that’s the subject of the next section.
How to receive God’s promises
Claiming God’s promises is common terminology in Christian circles today. So why do I say that we don’t need to claim them? The first reason is that nowhere in the New Testament do we find the word claim. Writers use a variety of verbs in connection with promise – have, receive, obtain, for example – but never the word claim. As we’ve already noted, God’s promises were seen as already fulfilled in Christ. Some of them we already have, so there’s no need to claim them. Others will not yet reach their ultimate fulfilment until the return of Christ. These we have to wait for patiently knowing that our present experience of the Holy Spirit is God’s guarantee that all will be fulfilled in the age to come. So there is no biblical basis for saying that God’s promises are to be claimed.
My second reason is the faithfulness of God. The writer to the Hebrews particularly stresses that God’s promises are reliable. Christians are to hold unswervingly to the hope they profess, for he who promised is faithful (10:23, cf. 11:11). The Christian’s hope is firm and secure (6:19), an anchor for the soul because God’s purpose is unchanging (6:17).
Other New Testament verses also stress God’s faithfulness and the reliability of his promises. Surely in the light of this the appropriate response to a promise from one who is totally reliable is a simple and implicit trust that he will do what he has said, not an insistence on one’s rights on the grounds that he has said it! Such an insistence takes no account of the patience we have already mentioned.
My third reason is the fatherhood of God. God’s promises are fulfilled in the salvation we receive in Christ. In him we have been brought into right relationship with God, our heavenly Father. Let me give you a personal illustration. I enjoyed throughout my life a very warm and close relationship with my earthly father while he was alive. Ι knew from him nothing but love, even if in my younger days that love was sometimes tempered with discipline. I count myself privileged to be his son and, because he was the kind of father he was, I not only loved him but I trusted him and respected him.
Such was my relationship with him that I knew that, if he had promised me something which was in his power to d0, he would certainly have done it. To claim such a promise — by saying, ‘Father, I insist that you give me what you have promised me. Give it to me now. Ι demand it as my right. You have promised’ – would have been to doubt his love, impugn his integrity and question his faithfulness. But because Ι trusted him and respected him I would not have dreamed of talking to him like that!
So, if I’m not going to claim God’s promises, how do I receive them? First of all, remember that in Christ all God’s salvation promises are already yours. You are already righteous in God’s sight because you have put your trust in Christ (Romans 5:1). You are already a child of God enjoying all the privileges of sonship (John 1:12-14, Romans 8:14-17). God’s Spirit already lives within you (Romans 8:9). You already have eternal life (John 3:16) and the promise of an eternal inheritance (2 Peter 1:4-5). All these blessings are described as promises in the New Testament and they are already yours. You don’t need to claim them. You don’t even need to receive them! They’re already yours because you’re in Christ.
But what about other promises that don’t come into this category? How do I know if they apply to me? Here are some simple guidelines. First, if the promise applies to all people, it applies to you. A good example of this would be promises that begin with words like whoever or everyone who. When God says:
Whoever (or everyone who) calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (Joel 2:32)
the promise clearly applies to everyone and that includes you! A New Testament example of this would be John 3:16.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Secondly, if the promise applies to all Christians, it applies to you. The promise in John 3:16 applies to all humankind. But there are some promises that only apply to Christians. For example, when Jesus promised his disciples, I am with you always, to the very end of the age (Matthew 28:20), the promise was clearly intended for all his disciples for all time. But the promise of his presence was not made to those who are not Christians. But if we’re Christians this is a promise which we have no need to claim or receive. We simply need to believe it.
The fact that some promises are only made to Christians shows that some of God’s promises have conditions attached. If you’re not yet a Christian, the promise of John 3:16 applies to you, because it applies to all. The condition for receiving it is putting your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you are a Christian, many of God’s promises to you are conditional. For example, the promise in 1 John 1:9 that God will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness only applies if we confess our sins. So when you’re looking at any of the promises God has made, it’s important to make sure that you fulfilled any conditions that may be attached.
Finally, let’s consider the category of promises that God made to individuals or to the nation of Israel. How do they apply to us as Christians? We’ll use two examples as illustrations. First, as I mentioned in an earlier talk, God’s promise to Abraham that he would become the father of a great nation (e.g. Genesis 12:2-3) was clearly specific to Abraham. It’s not a promise to you or me. But that does not mean that God cannot speak to us through it. As we read on in Genesis, and indeed in the rest of the Bible, we learn how God graciously fulfilled that promise in a wonderful way. We learn that God is faithful to his promises and are encouraged to believe that he will keep the promises he has made to us.
Secondly, let’s consider a promise that has become very popular among Christians in recent years. In Jeremiah 29:11 God says:
I know the plans I have for you… plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
This is clearly a promise that is of great encouragement to us as Christians and yet, as we look at the context, it was not made to Christians, but to God’s people who were in exile in Babylon in the sixth century before Christ. So how is it of any value to us as Christians today? Quite simply because it very wonderfully summarises truths which we know from elsewhere in Scripture are most definitely applicable to us as Christians. So, although the promise was not made to us, we know that it is as true for us as it was for those to whom it was first made. And the same is true of many other Bible promises. They reveal the character of God and it is not difficult for us to believe that what he said to his people back then he is still saying to us today.
In conclusion, then, the Bible records many things that God has said. Some of them are statements of fact, some are questions, some are commands, and some are promises. It’s important that we distinguish between them. Then, when we have identified a promise, we need to take note of the context and who the promise was made to. As we have seen, not all God’s promises are directly applicable to us, although God may very well speak to us through them.
However, some of God’s promises – those that I referred to earlier as salvation promises – are most definitely for all who have trusted Christ as Saviour. Some of these are already ours. Others, like the promise of Christ’s return and the blessings that accompany it, though guaranteed, are something for which we must patiently wait. It is through faith and patience that we receive God’s promises (Hebrews 6:12). Sometimes we may need to take a step of faith and act upon the promise he has made. Other times all we can do is trust him. If God has made a promise, he certainly will keep it. But the timing is in his hands and it’s enough for us to know that he loves us, that he knows what is best for us, and that he is always working all things together for our good, because we are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).