The Promises Are Good
Do you ever wonder about God’s promises? You know, the ones that seem to be huge and wide sweeping. The ones that seem to go on forever.
Yet, never really seem to happen.
I do.
Often.
One of the things that I have begun to notice is that when these promises are stated they are almost always tied to the people needing to be faithful. The people are almost always never faithful. So, it makes that God doesn’t have to fulfill the deal.
Yet, that’s not really the case. The promises of God do get fulfilled. They just tend to be fullfilled in ways and in a time frame that we would not typically expect.
Big promises get fulfilled after a while and even though the people are faithless God remains faithful. I think that over the years, the people of God began to understand this. They began to understand that God was often going to fulfill his promises in ways that they would not expect.
God promised to David that there would be a descendant of his on his throne forever. This certainly didn’t appear to be the case when the kingdom was destroyed and the people were sent to exile.
Yet, the promise held true even if the people didn’t.
There was a sense of the faithfulness of God that the people held onto and didn’t let go of. The knew, that at some point, in God’s grace that God would make good on his promise.
There was a song that they would sing on pilgrimage that reminded them of this grace and the faithfulness of God.
Lord, remember David— all the ways he suffered and how he swore to the Lord, how he promised the strong one of Jacob: “I won’t enter my house, won’t get into my bed. I won’t let my eyes close, won’t let my eyelids sleep, until I find a place for the Lord, a dwelling place for the strong one of Jacob.” Yes, we heard about it in Ephrathah; we found it in the fields of Jaar. Let’s enter God’s dwelling place; let’s worship at the place God rests his feet! Get up, Lord, go to your residence— you and your powerful covenant chest! Let your priests be dressed in righteousness; let your faithful shout out with joy! And for the sake of your servant David, do not reject your anointed one. The Lord swore to David a true promise that God won’t take back: “I will put one of your own children on your throne. And if your children keep my covenant and the laws that I will teach them, then their children too will rule on your throne forever.” Because the Lord chose Zion; he wanted it for his home. “This is my residence forever. I will live here because I wanted it for myself. I will most certainly bless its food supply; I will fill its needy full of food! I will dress its priests in salvation, and its faithful will shout out loud with joy! It is there that I will make David’s strength thrive. I will prepare a lamp for my anointed one there. I will dress his enemies in shame, but the crown he wears will shine.”
This song, was their reminder of what God would do. The promises that God made would be ones that God would fulfill.
What promises do you see in Scripture that you are believing God for? Ones that you trust God will bring to fruition but all you have is God’s grace to hold onto?
I keep learning, over and over, that God is sovereign and good. God is also mysterious and works in ways that I don’t always understand. Learning to trust and rest in God by faith is much harder that I could have ever imagined.
To #LoveWell we must learn this art, this art of trusting God even when it seems hopeless.
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