Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Friday, May thirteenth.
As you listen, be reminded of the overwhelming promises of God and of the trustworthiness of the one who makes them. What would you think about a person who was very, very wealthy and you look at them and you think, wait a minute, nobody's wealthy. But look how he dresses. Or look what he drives. Look where he lives.
You wonder, well, it doesn't quite match. In other words, if he has all of that, why does he act the way he acts? And so, you have to ask yourself the question, well, does he not know that he's wealthy? Does he not believe that he's wealthy? Does he not know how to cash in on his wealth? What's wrong with a person who lives that kind of life?
Well, something definitely is wrong. But I know a lot of believers who are the same way. They are very wealthy, but they don't act like it. And when I think about how clear God has made His Word and the awesome way He has provided for us. And yet, people oftentimes act like they're paupers. Or act like, you know, I just never have enough. God's left me out. God doesn't understand what my needs are. I know that's what the Bible says, but it's not working for me. Well, what's the problem? Is the problem with God?
Or is the problem with the fact that I don't understand what I have? So, I want you to listen very carefully. It'll change your way you think about yourself and maybe the way you think about God. So, I want you to turn to the little book of Second Peter and look, if you will, in chapter one. And in this particular passage of Scripture, Peter describes this awesome wealth that you and I have.
Listen to what he says. Beginning in verse one of this first chapter of Second Peter. Simon Peter, a bondservant and apostle of Jesus Christ, are those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ. Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. Now watch these next two verses. Seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness through the true knowledge of Him, of Jesus, who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that's in this world by lust. Now, it's these last two verses I want us to look at for a moment. When he says that His divine power has granted us something, that it has gifted us something. What's that gift? He says everything we need to live a godly life. And when he says, look, He has granted to us, he uses a form of the verb which means that has granted to us in the past and what He has granted to us in the past is still going on.
It is called the passive participle. Something happened in the past and still going on. So God has granted to every single one of His children something that is still going on in their life. And what that is, is He mentions here, these precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that's in this world by lust.
And what he's simply saying is this. You're not trusting Jesus Christ as our Savior? We took upon ourselves the nature of the Lord Jesus Christ. Doesn't mean that we're exactly like Him, but we have Him living on the inside of us.
Now, think about this for a moment. If you have Jesus on the inside of you, which He talks about abiding in Him and He's abiding in us. And as Paul talks about, Christ in us, our hope of glory.
If Jesus Christ is abiding in me, living in me, then I have the most valuable thing possible on the inside of me. And he puts it in this way. He speaks of promises and describes them as precious and magnificent.
Now the question is this. Why should we believe that the promises of God can be described this way? That they are promises that are cherishable, magnificent, precious?
Why? And first of all, I would simply say that one of the primary reasons that they are cherishable, magnificent, and precious is who gave them? All the promises in the Word of God came from Almighty God. He never gives anything at second rate. He doesn't almost do anything. He didn't sort of create the world, but perfect design in every single aspect of it. So it is in your life and mine. He doesn't do things halfway.
He does them completely, beautifully, magnificently. And the problem is, we don't get that message oftentimes. And so, when we talk about His promises falling in that category, then here's what it says to me. That means if I have these promises, I have something extremely valuable to me personally. Because His promises are given to every single one of His children. Once you receive Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, it's this awesome sense of wealth that comes with that, that most people will never recognize.
And so, what I want you to see in this passage of Scripture and in all these passages is this. Whether you know it or not, the day you received Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, you became this awesome, wealthy person. When you think about what you own and what your wealth is, where is your wealth?
Is it in your family? Is it in your material possessions? Are you wise enough to recognize that your wealth is in a form and a fashion that no one can take from you?
You will never be able to spend it all. That it's there given to you by God. And it's given to you by God, which He will never change. Because the moment you trusted Him as your Savior, you inherited something. You became a child of God. And with that decision of becoming a child of God, you became a very wealthy person. Now, where is all this value?
Here's where it is. It's in the promises of God. And I'm going to show you in a few moments why I say that.
That when you trusted Him as your Savior, the promises of the Word of God became your promises. You are a very wealthy person. So, what I'd like to do is simply tell you what you have. Right now, I want you to see what is at your disposal. What is before you to be enjoyed, to be claimed, to call upon. And you have to ask yourself the question, number one, do I believe this?
And secondly, how do I claim it? So, let's begin with the first evidence of God's wealth that He's bequeathed to you. So, I want you to turn, if you will, to Romans chapter five for a moment.
And here's what He says. He says in verse six, For while we were still helpless at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrated His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, much more than having been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, we shall be saved by His life. And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.
Now watch this. When you trusted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, He forgave you of all your sins. He brought you into relationship with Himself, a personal relationship. That from that point on, watch this, you can call yourself a child of God. That is your possession. You now have a heritage. And that heritage is that God is your Father. Jesus Christ is your Savior, your Brother, and you are now a member of the family of God. That's who you are. You cease to be who you used to be, a child of the devil. You are now a child of God, number one.
Very important. And until that happens, nothing else that I'm going to say would apply to you. But that's the beginning and that's the foundation. When I listen to Christians talk oftentimes, they don't even realize what happened to them.
God invited them into His family and now calls them a follower of Jesus. That is an awesome heritage and a promise from God. Now, that's one thing. So, let's think about it in this light also. We're talking about the wealth that you have.
The second thing I want you to notice is this. Not only did He save you and forgive you and cleanse you and write you a name in the Lamb's Book of Life, make you a part of the kingdom. But He gave you this promise. This promise is in First John one, nine.
You all know it by heart. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. What an awesome promise. Here's what that means. It means that as I live out my life in this filthy, dirty world, I can stay clean every day. Because He says if we confess our sins, He's faithful. That is, you can trust Him.
Faithful and just, He has the right to do it. Forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from every unrighteous thing. That says, I am very wealthy, that I have the privilege of going to God Almighty, asking Him, Lord, this is in my life.
It shouldn't be. I recognize it. I acknowledge it. And I'm asking You to forgive me of my sins.
That is an awesome possession. A third part of that wealth is simply this, and that is His continued presence in our life. This is the sovereign God of the universe who says, I will never leave you nor forsake you. There in Hebrews chapter thirteen, verse five. I will never leave you nor forsake you. You know what that says?
See if you can match this. You have a traveling companion in the person of Jesus Christ who will never, under any condition, no matter what, ever desert you or forsake you, period. And you see, it's when people turn their eyes away from the Lord God and when they start looking at themselves and their situation and circumstances, instead of asking, what's the promise of the Father? The promise of the Father is, listen, once you trust Jesus as your Savior, you can't ever be alone. You may want to be, you can't be. He says, I will not forsake you, no, never desert you under any condition. That is an unconditional promise of God that belongs to every believer. And listen, nobody can change that. You could go to prison or you could be here, you could be there.
Doesn't make any difference. He says, I'll never leave you nor forsake you. I'll never desert you, period. So, the next time you get down in the mouth and you're lonely and you think I need to counsel, I need this, oh, God help me. Just stop and ask yourself the question now, what is that I possess? I possess Jesus as my intimate friend who lives on the inside of me and who promised that no matter what goes on in my life, He will never leave me. You can't beat that for a promise or for friendship.
That is an awesome possession which no one else can give you and no one else can promise you that. Then of course, He promises us that we don't even have to live this life in our own strength and power. But we have the Holy Spirit who is called our Helper there in John chapter fourteen, verse sixteen.
When He says, I'm going to send you a Helper, and when He comes, He talks about what He will do for us. When He calls you to serve Him, you have the Holy Spirit to enable you. To give you wisdom and direction and guidance for your life. And to empower you in order to do well, to do good, whatever He calls you to do.
Nobody else can do that. Listen, people, and oftentimes pastors, when they fall in this trap, they go on their eloquence and they go on their education and all these things. And the truth is none of us has anything to say apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. It's the Spirit of God that takes the Word of God that drives it home to people's hearts. You have, watch this, you have the third person of the Trinity living on the inside of you, listen, and you have His guarantee that He will never leave you and He will empower you to do anything and everything God calls you to do. Well, that's being a godly mother of your children or being the president of a corporation.
Doesn't make any difference what it is. That's His promise. And it's these promises that make you wealthy. So far, you've not heard anything that I've said that anybody else can provide for you other than God because of your relationship to Him. Then, of course, there's the whole issue of God's strength.
And there are lots of verses in here about all of these. But if you'll notice in this forty-first chapter of Isaiah, listen to what he says. He says, You're my servant.
I've chosen you and not rejected you. Do not fear, for I'm with you. Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you.
Surely, I will help you. I will strengthen you. Listen, what that promise is, the promise of God's strength.
All of us come to those times in our life when we feel weak or we don't feel like we can manage or we don't feel like we can make it. He says, I will strengthen you. Now, if your friends promise you that, that just depends on what they can do. But listen, when the sovereign of the universe who has all power and all might gives you this wondrous, precious, magnificent promise, I will strengthen you. I can tell you, that is a promise no one else can promise you.
But it is an awesome, magnificent promise. I think of it a few times, probably a lot of times in the ministry when maybe the week's been very, very full and studied and prayed and all the rest. And yet, come Sunday morning, maybe I'll be a little tired. Or, for example, if I've had a flu or something like that and thank God, I can hardly get dressed. And somehow think, oh, Jesus, You're going to have to help me.
And I'm telling Him what kind of shape I'm in and I've done my best all weekend, pity party, this, that, and the other. Walk out on the platform, it's like, oh, that disappears and the power of God's all over the place. That can only be God doing what He says, I will strengthen you.
Listen, that's your possession. It's a promise. Listen, and you say, well, I'm not sure God will do that for me.
He doesn't make exceptions. Now, if you're living in sin, it doesn't mean God won't strengthen you, but what you do, you foul up the issue. But He says, I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will undergird you.
I will be for you whatever you need. Then He says, for example, that He'll supply all of our needs. Who can promise you that? Not one person. So, there are lots of verses in the Bible about that.
But probably one of the most valuable ones is the sixth chapter of Matthew. For this reason I say to you, don't be worried about your life as to what you're going to eat or what you'll drink or for your body as to what you'll put on. It's not life more than food and your body more than clothing. He talks about the birds of the air and the lilies of the field and all the rest. And then He comes down and He says, do not worry then saying, what will you eat? What will you drink?
What will you wear for your clothing? He says, the unbelievers think about these things. Your heavenly Father knows that you need all of these things. So, what is He saying? Here's His promise to do what?
To meet our daily needs. What about this whole issue of answered prayer? Who can promise you that they'll answer your prayer?
Well, somebody may be able to help you in some issue, but listen to what He says in First John chapter five, fourteen, fifteen. This is the confidence that we have in Him. That if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, we know that we have the petition that we desire out of Him. Who can promise you that? No one else. And there are many, many verses of answered prayer in the Word of God.
But watch this. People say, well, I have needs. Are you cashing in? What need do you have?
Well, how do I cash in? Well, prayer is certainly one of the ways. And so, oftentimes we feel needy and we want somebody else to meet the need or we think, I don't know how God's going to work this out. Here's the promise. This is the confidence that you have in Him. And so, He makes the crystal clear. For example, He says, Ask and it shall be given you. Seek and ye shall find.
Knock and it shall be opened to you. So, there's promise after promise after promise of answered prayer. Therefore, if you don't have what you need, it's because you are not claiming for yourself what He has very clearly promised in the Word of God. Then He gives this awesome passage in the eighty-fourth Psalm.
Look at this for a moment. Love this eighty-fourth Psalm because of what He promises and the way God has said it in this particular passage. He says for all of His children, this only applies to His children.
He says in verse eleven of the eighty-fourth Psalm, For the Lord God is the Son and Shield, the Lord gives grace and glory. Now watch this. No good thing, watch that, no good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly. Look at that promise.
Nobody can promise you that. No good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly. That is a possession you have that every single solitary thing that you need, God has already provided for it. And He says none of that, He won't withhold it from you if you walk uprightly. That's one of those promises that's conditional. That is, if you walk, live a godly life, whatever you need, He says He will not withhold any good thing from you. Thank you for listening to God's Precious Promises. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-04-19 12:49:48 / 2023-04-19 12:57:53 / 8