The Surety of God's Promises

If you would turn with me in your Bibles to the second book of Corinthians chapter 1. We will be looking at verses 17 through 22. Hear God's word to us.

I was reading when I wanted to do this. Do I make my plans according to the flesh, ready to say yes, yes, and no, no at the same time? As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been yes and no. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not yes and no, but in Him it is always yes. For all the promises of God find their yes in Him. That is why it is through Him that we utter our amen to God for His glory. And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put His seal on us and given us His Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father we come to you tonight and we ask that your Holy Spirit teach your word. Lord as I walk through this text I ask that you keep me from error. And Lord what we glean from this small portion of scripture, let it build us in Christ, in our faith, in our walk, in love, that we may better serve you responding with a heart of gratitude and joy to the grace and mercy that you show. We just thank you for all things through Christ Jesus who we pray. Amen.

You may be seated. In the book of Hebrews, in the third chapter and the tenth chapter, the writer tells us that he calls us to exhort one another. In the third chapter he's saying we're to exhort one another so that we're not hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

Doug touched on that this morning in his message. In the tenth chapter the writer tells us that we are to stir one another up to love and good works. And so tonight as we take a look at this passage in 2 Corinthians, that's what I'm praying will occur, is that we stir one another up to love and good works for what God has accomplished through Christ Jesus. I believe, and I think Grace Church has done it so well all the years that we've been here, we need to be continually pointed to him who we can rest in.

The one who has accomplished everything for us and the one who sustains us and keeps us in his faith. The text we're looking at this evening is from the second book of Corinthians and Paul is writing this text as a defense. He has made plans to travel to Corinth.

Those plans had to be changed. And there were false teachers in Corinth who was using his change in plan in order to attack his reliability, his truthfulness, his veracity. When we look at the section here, Paul in his response turns right to the doctrine that he proclaimed to the church at Corinth as a way that they can know that he is not a vacillating person, that he is not one to change or sway side to side. But he reminds them of the doctrine that he presented to them and the faithfulness in which God had worked amongst them. Paul is using the doctrine that he brought to the church at Corinth originally as his grounding saying, as sure as God is, you can rely on me. He does this in Galatians also. If you think about Paul's writing to the Galatians, he tells them that even if an angel would come and preach a different gospel, that they should shun it or send it away because Paul knows that the revelation that he is providing is the revelation that Christ himself has given Paul concerning the status of man and what God must do for them.

So in 2 Corinthians, that's the background of the text that we're looking at, but what I would like us to focus on are verses 19 and 20. Because in that defense, in that movement of us to understand that we can trust the doctrine, Paul says these words, For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not yes and no, but in Him is always yes. For all the promises of God find their yes in Him. That is why through Him that we utter our amen to God for His glory. Paul is driving his point home of why he can be trustworthy because of God's trustworthiness, but in these verses he shares with us truths that we must rest in.

There's two of them I would like us to look at. First, there are promises of God to you and I to the church. It just so happens and I come from a liturgical background and I didn't even realize that it was Pentecost. But tonight we are celebrating or today we are celebrating the fulfillment of a promise. Jesus said if I go, I will send from the Father the Holy Spirit and we see on that day of Pentecost the fulfillment of that promise. If we look through scripture, we will find several promises, multiple promises, even to the form of covenant, which is going to be important to what we are looking at.

But Paul uses this truth that there are promises of God to the people and that it is through Jesus that these promises are sure that they can rely in the truth that He has proclaimed. I want to ask a personal question. I'll give you my answer. Do many of us struggle accepting that a promise is going to be fulfilled?

I do. Just in our culture and in what our sinfulness of man has caused, I have many times looked at somebody and said, I promise I'll do that. I'll be at work. Somebody will say, can you do this for me? Yeah, I'll get it done.

Are you sure? I promise it'll be done. And at 5.15 when I'm going, I didn't do that and I promised him I would. So hopefully most of the time I go back and try to accomplish what I promised, but I'm sure there's times I've walked out the door and it hasn't been done. In a sense, because of the way we amongst ourselves abuse promises, it can lead us to a cynicalness of those promises.

What I want to do tonight is drive us to what the main promise is that we can rest in, why we know that promise is fulfilled and will be fulfilled at the consummation and exhort us and stir us up to good works and love so that we can take this word out to the community around us, to our families, to our neighbors, to even our enemies, that Jesus Christ is our only hope. Two points I'd like us to look at, the first one being that there are a plethora, a multitude of promises of God. I went to the dictionary Merriam-Webster to look up what does a promise mean and of course it has that first, what I would call our man-centered promise. It says it's a declaration that one will do or refrain from doing something specified and I think in our day in day out life that is what we think of when we think of a promise.

The second definition in the dictionary is this, a legally binding declaration that gives the person to whom it has made a right to expect or to claim the performance or forbearance of a specified act. That is going to tie in when we look at the promises of God to us because God doesn't make a simple statement, God makes a covenant which gives us a right to expect what God has covenanted to do. But as we walk through, we still deal with that cynicalness and I'll speak for me, not for you, there are times when life seems overwhelming whether it's relationships in my family, whether it's work issues, whether it's monetary issues, where there are times where in my inner being I just think to myself, why?

Why? And if I find myself not resting on the word of God, not resting on the promises that are made and I ask myself how can you be like this because you're different? The word of God is true, it is effective and it has made a change why can't you trust it but again over and over in the world we see promises broken.

I just flipped through on an internet search promises broken and I would like to share four of them with you. Woodrow Wilson, 1916, running for President of the United States uttered this promise, I will keep us out of war. 29 days after his election President Wilson stood before a joint session of Congress for a declaration of war against Germany. Herbert Hoover, 1928, ran for election on the promise of a chicken in every pot. In less than eight months of taking office the Great Depression began. FDR and LBJ both promised to stay out of foreign wars and both deployed troops to war on foreign soils during their term. And the one that I remember most famously in 1988, the first George Bush in his campaigning looked at the camera and said read my lips, no new taxes.

And in 1990 he signed into law the tax increase proposed by the Congress. We see in our leaders, within our family members, within our co-workers, within our friends, promises made and promises not kept. So the question would rise why can we trust God and his promises?

If we go to scripture, scripture gives us the perfect answer. In the book of Numbers chapter 23, and we're going to look at a prophet who is of ill repute, Balaam says these words in verses 18 and 19. And Balaam took up his discourse and said rise Balak and hear.

Give ear to me, O son of Zippor. God is not man that he should lie or a son of man that he should change his mind. He has said and will he not do it or he has spoken and will he not fulfill it.

Balaam makes it very simple. God is not us. God is not one who changes. We can go to Malachi chapter 3 verse 6. For I the Lord do not change.

We can go to Genesis 1, 1. In the beginning God created. God is sovereign. God is powerful. He is unchanging and we can rest upon those truths.

God has proven over and over. Tonight we stand in a church because the Holy Spirit has been sent and moved on the hearts of men and women and called them to himself. God is not us. We have a tendency of thinking of God in humanistic terms and God is so holy or set apart from us that it is sinful when we do that.

You know, in the 70s and into the 80s when I was a kid, I don't know a better way to say it, the hippie movement, the free love movement, they loved to make the reference to the man upstairs. It's not the man upstairs. It is the holy, right, creating God.

It is the one powerful enough to snuff us out in an instant. It is the one who has looked upon his creature with love and redeemed him for his own sake and his own glory. So as we look and we ask that question, why can we trust God and his promises?

Balaam tells us clearly. It is because he is not man or the son of man. He does not change his mind. He has said and he will not do it. Yes, he will. Or he has spoken and he will not fulfill it.

The answer, of course, is yes, he will. Even Samuel shows us in chapter 15 of 1 Samuel, God will not lie and he is not a man. We serve a supreme God. We serve a God so far above our comprehension, but he allows us through the Holy Spirit to have communion and comprehension of him.

Left to ourselves, we would have no ability to even understand what God is. So then the question popped up in my mind, how many promises of God are there in the Bible? Thankfully for Google, it's a lot easier to do research anymore. But when I did a quick Google search, it was amazing. It placed the number of promises, and I guess it's on how you look at them and what a promise is to what it's not, but from anywhere to 50 promises in the Bible to 9,000. That's a big range.

So I thought, is there a better way to do this? And I said, I'll go to the concordance and see how many times the word promise is used in scripture. Now, depending on translation, 50 is the bottom number again, but up to 214 times we see that word promise used. So it is definitely clear that the scripture is filled with promises from God and by God to us. What is really amazing is these promises are both to believer and unbeliever. There is a promise by God that there will be judgment of sin. It is not debatable.

It is not on a whim. God will judge sin. And that promise is made in Romans 2, 6 through 11.

There is a promise to creation itself that God is redeeming and reconciling all things to Himself in Romans 8. And if we want to walk down through, and some of these rehash the same thought, but Isaiah 41, 10, fear not for I am with you. Be not dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you.

I will help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. That is a promise of God to the people. That if they rest in Him, that is what He does for them.

In Deuteronomy 31, 8, it is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you. He will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed. The Lord will not leave us or forsake us. These promises, they are so sweet to us because in a world where everything seems to leave or forsake or leave us down or break the promises, God does not. John 14, 18, I will not leave you as an orphan.

I will come to you. Matthew 11, 28 and 29, come to me all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls. We can go on and on to promises. Romans 8, 28, the big one.

God works for good for those who believe, for those who love Him. We have promise after promise but where I would like to focus us tonight is on the promise that we find in Jeremiah 31 verses 31 through 34. God writes this to the people through the prophet Jeremiah and He says these words. Behold the days are coming declares the Lord when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. My covenant that they broke though I was their husband declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days declares the Lord. I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people and no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother saying know the Lord. For they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.

You remember I said in the dictionary we had two definitions and that second definition was that a promise gave a right of expectation for what was being promised. That is a covenant God revealing to the children of Israel to us that a new covenant is coming that the mosaic covenant though a proper covenant though one that points them to a need. They require a sacrificial system because in that covenant they cannot keep the law of God the way God has commanded them. And God is going to bring a new covenant and that new covenant is going to be what we just read and ending with for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more. This is the covenant of redemption.

I would argue all the fear not and I will lead and I will take my people all those are found in this single covenant of redemption. This covenant promise goes back to Genesis 3 15 where we see the first proclamation of the gospel when God is giving the curses and he looks and he says that the woman will have her seed and that he will crush the head of the serpent seed and it will bruise his heel. This redemptive covenant carries through all of scripture from Genesis to Revelation when we move to Revelation which we studied I think for three years and dug repeatedly from this pulpit said Jesus wins, Jesus wins. It's the fulfillment of that redemptive covenant. Tonight we stand here and we can declare Jesus one. We are waiting for a consummation that is accomplished and it is God's timing for the fulfillment, the consummation to come.

This promise gives us complete rest. We look at the Mosaic covenant, we realize that God says for life to be had we must be able to obey this law and if each one of us looks in the mirror we realize just as the Israelites showed us that no one can do it. And so Paul when he is writing to the church at Corinth and he is going to that doctrine he is basing his trustworthiness on God's trustworthiness which is his proclamation of Jesus as the one who fulfills all our needs in that covenant. When we stop to think about how God provides every single thing we need he has put a way for us to be right and that way is the surety that we have in the promises. Paul writes it like this and it will be point two that Jesus Christ is the surety of all these promises if we look again at verses 19 and 20 it says for the Son of God Jesus Christ who we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I was not yes and no but in Him it was always yes for all the promises of God find their yes in Him. For all the promises of God find their yes in Him.

What does that mean? Calvin in his commentary on these verses said he is the foundation and security. I would say that he is the surety. He is the payment that makes us right in the new covenant. What has Jesus Christ done for you and I? Well first he is fulfilled. Matthew 5 17 we read this, do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.

I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. Jesus' words spoken to let us know that when he came incarnate through the virgin birth he did not come just to live an average life and then somehow appease God but he came to actually fulfill the covenant that was put before him. Jesus came and allowed himself to be put under the law but not only did he allow that he perfectly kept that law. The scripture tells us that Jesus just didn't sin, Jesus knew no sin. He perfectly fulfills the covenant given to Moses and the people at that time.

If we look at Luke 24 and he said to them, O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory and beginning with Moses and all the prophets he interpreted to them in all scriptures the things concerning himself. He is the entirety of the whole Old Testament. The Old Testament points to the only way that we can be right with God and that is Jesus Christ to those who were under the mosaic covenant.

They had a sacrificial system and that whole system was designed to show them that they utterly fail but there is blood and that blood is of their redeemer and only through that blood can they be forgiven. This evening as we stand and look back at the cross, there is nothing in Jay that merits God's favor or God's goodness or God's grace or God's promise. But I look upon a cross where Jesus Christ, the one who in my place fulfilled the covenant then took me under his blood and into himself and presents me before God the Father as right and holy and just what he is. That's the new covenant, what Jesus has done in the fulfillment of it. We hear these words over and over in our Sunday schools and in our sermons and yet there are times that we wonder is it true?

Can this really be true? And the writer of scripture, God himself, doesn't leave us linger in that question. Romans chapter 1 verse 4, and was declared to be the son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord. 1 Corinthians 15 verse 20, but in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. 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. How do we know the work of Christ is sure?

How is he our surety? And Paul tells us and Peter tells us that it is by the empty tomb, that he was hung on a cross, that sin was imputed to them, that he took the punishment that you and I deserve, that he was buried, but on the third day he came back to life completely. And he stepped out of that tomb and he appeared to many proclaiming the good news that he is the fulfillment of all the Old Testament to that point. And then he ascends to the Father and sits at his right hand.

So we have he is the fulfillment, he is our surety, and then on top of that that surety gives us his promise that we find in Luke 22 19 through 20. A lot of people ask me why I find such great comfort and I desire to celebrate the Lord's table as often as I do. There is nothing that we do in my opinion that drives home the point of what Christ has accomplished and what grace is than the Lord's table. And then Luke 22 19 it says and he took bread and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them saying this is my body which is given for you do this in remembrance of me. And likewise the cup after they had eaten saying this cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.

Jesus left no question of what he was about to go and do to his disciples though they couldn't fully comprehend it. We now on this side of the cross and in the tomb know definitely what this text is stating. Jesus says that by this blood I am sealing the new covenant of the Father. And what is that new covenant?

Back to Jeremiah we read this. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days declare the Lord. I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother saying know the Lord for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest declares the Lord for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more. What a covenant. If you notice there is nothing in there that you and I are called that we are going to do.

This promise of God, this promise of redemption, this covenant sealed in the blood of Jesus Christ is fully a work of God. I will. God says I will. I will make them my people. I will forgive their iniquity.

I will remember their sin no more. It is God's doing over and over and we are the recipients of his grace and his mercy as he applies it through the Holy Spirit. Paul finishes in Corinthians by telling us that that is why through him we utter our Amen to God for his glory and it is God who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us and who has also put his seal on us and given us his spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.

It is fully a work of God. If that cannot stir us up to worship, if that cannot stir us up to love one another, if that cannot stir us up when we step back and see, I said in Sunday school this morning, when we realize Christ coming to this earth incarnate, everyone he encountered was at an enmity with God. They were all sinners. Christ died for his enemies. God calls out us from that world of rebellion against him by his Holy Spirit by changing our heart and giving us a desire to go after him.

But it is all God's work and not ours. Paul is telling the Corinthians there are promises of God, you have heard them from us, the gospel is the promise of God of overcoming our sin problem. Remember Corinthians, you can trust God because he is sure, he is not changing, he is not man, he does not lie.

Grace Church, you can trust God. This past year has seen a lot of things go on and people shaken in the world around us, shaken to its core, but I am here to tell you that tonight Jesus Christ reigns. Jesus Christ is in charge and his promises are sure to us. We are waiting for the fulfillment of that last promise. We are in those last days. They began at the cross and we look forward to Christ's imminent return. John, when he wrote Revelation, that is what he uttered at the very end. Come Lord Jesus, we should be looking forward to.

Yes, the world beats us up. Yes, promises are broken, but God's promises have not been broken. Jesus is God incarnate.

The tomb is empty and he will return to take his to himself. Jesus is the surety of our promise and Jesus is our only hope in the promises of God. Let us rejoice and praise him.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for your word. And Lord God, as we see how you have revealed yourself to us, you have revealed it in promises that are sealed with the blood of Christ, with the working of the Holy Spirit. And Lord, we just praise your name for that. Lord, forgive us as we may vacillate and worry and lean on our own understandings too many times. Drive that away from us and fill us with your spirit so that we may rest firmly on the promises of God day in, day out, moment by moment, knowing that you love us and you have accomplished all we need. It is in Christ we pray. Amen.