Opening Text: Eph 2:1 thru 7
Introduction: This morning I want to talk about some things that God has promised to His children. But first, I would like to take a few moments to talk about some of the promises man has made to himself and how these promises have miserably failed time and again.
For example, in the last couple of weeks we have seen our nation’s newest leaders take their oath of office. We have seen the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Attorney General, etc.
Each of them has put their left hand on the Bible while raising their right hand to make their oath of allegiance to God and country. They say something like,
“I solemnly swear to…”
My hope is that none of them ever let us down. But that is not likely. The fact of the matter is inevitably one of them (perhaps more) will break the oath they made.
And you know the routine. First there will be the accusations of wrongdoing, and then the scandals will be in the newspapers and on television.
We will probably watch as these men or women fail to live up to the oath they swore with before the President, the Vice President and all of America.
I hope that doesn’t happen but my point is this:
1. Man will never be able to keep all of his promises.
2. Man is vulnerable and unreliable.
3. No matter who he or she is, and no matter how upstanding of a citizen they are, man will fail himself.
But it is God Who has never failed man.
We have many people around the world who are committed to very noble causes. Many of you have heard the call for “World Peace”. Perhaps you recently saw the billionaire tycoon, Ted Turner, donate over 50 million dollars towards nuclear disarmament.
There are good and kind people (everywhere) who dream and have very strong convictions for what has been called the “New World Order”.
These people believe that (eventually) all nations will learn how to live and get along with one another.
They genuinely believe there will be a new democracy that everyone will someday agree upon and live under.
There are also those who believe in mankind being able to “evolve him self into a higher order of life”.
My friend I don’t want to pop the bubble you are living in, but these are all false hopes. And that is because, all of these hopes are designed by man.
I want you to know that we do have promises that we can rely upon that involve world peace.
But these promises have been made by God.
We can rely on the promises and the oath of God.
Text: Hebrews 6:16 thru 19(a)
Prayer:
Today, we have hope in that we have an ANCHOR FOR OUR SOUL. We need this anchor to hold us in the harbor (safety) of the Lord.
Everyone is looking for someone, anyone, to rely on.
Man is primed and ready for someone to come along and fix all of the world’s woes and bring us peace.
But man has proven countless times that he does not have what it takes to bring peace to this earth.
Nevertheless, man continues to yearn for a better way.
Many think that the possibility of a single worldwide government is becoming more and more a likely.
There is now an anticipation of this universal government. The Bible has prophesied of this happening and we know it to be the Anti-Christ.
This anticipation is growing and has been growing since the prophesies were first made in the New Testament.
This growing of anticipation has become more evident within the last century.
Listen to what the Apostle John warned us,
I John 2:18
“Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour.”
We must prepare ourselves to endure unto the end, no matter what. Man will always have his better ideas and aspirations, but God has given us His oath and strong consolation for us to exclusively rely on.
If you have Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you have a lot to look forward to in these last days.
Eventually we will be with King forever.
But in the meantime, (while we wait for Jesus to return) we need to be careful that we do not trust in the promises made by man.
The false prophets that will try and distort the Promises of God may not be seen in the places you look for him to be. They may not be on Christian television.
We must look only to the Lord for our promises.
In our text, we see an “oath of confirmation”.
What is it that God has promised to us?
1. THE PROMISE OF JESUS
As we read together (earlier), the Bible says something in Ephesians 2:3 that may have been a shock to you.
“…we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath…”
These are strong words about where we have come from. We were born into this world, and this life, with an inheritance we did not want.
We were born from an ancestry of disobedience.
Many people have a hard time understanding and accepting this.
We may look at a newborn baby and only see innocence. I know this to be true because this is all that my wife and I could see when we first looked at both of our children. Charity and Tim were so precious.
Our daughter’s hair was a strawberry color. I had never seen anything like that before. She was an absolute angel to her mother and I. In the maternity ward, she was a very happy and content baby. The nurses were concerned that she wasn’t getting the fluids out of her lungs fast enough. So they attached a note to her bassinette that said, “stimulate to cry”.
Later, we had Tim. Our son weighed in at 10 lbs. 11 ounces. He was healthy strapping boy that would have made any father proud.
Tim turned out to be the gentle giant.
He was always well behaved and thoughtful.
Your children and my children are gifts from God.
But no matter how sweet these newborns can appear, the Bible says that all of us are/were “children of wrath”.
Some of us know all too well what that means.
Maybe you were like me, and you had the misfortune of seeing this in raising your children.
Nonetheless, one of the promises that Hebrews 6 is refers to is the PROMISE OF CHRIST. Thank God!
In spite of the fact that you and I were born as “children of wrath”, we have an oath from God that has overcome our disobedience and rebellion.
How is that?
We have the next two verses to consider in Ephesians 2. In verses 4 and 5 we read,
“But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us…made us alive together with Christ…”
We have the PROMISE OF CHRIST. God cannot lie, and He will not go back on His Word. In spite of how you live your life, God is not going to give up on you.
There are times when we disappoint the Lord, and we can’t see how He would ever love us again, but His Grace is more than sufficient for any of us.
Knowing that He loves us so much, wouldn’t it make sense that we begin to love Him more than we do?
2. A STRONG CONSOLATION
This oath of God is served to us as a:
· Confirmation of our hope in the Lord Jesus Christ.
(God promised us the forgiveness of Jesus)
· Means of ending all strife between us and God.
(God never intended it to be difficult for us to live for Him.)
The oath of God (in essence) is the way in which we can find reconciliation with the Lord.
That is, the oath of God dispels any of our doubts we have with God. As a result of this oath, we can begin to trust God in all things.
We will never find trust or belief in anything else this world (or mankind) has to offer. Nothing can compare with the promises of the Lord and His oath to us.
We know this to be true in that we have no other greater trust than the trust we have in His Son, Jesus Christ. Nothing can compare with that oath from God.
This oath with God can resolve and reconcile all of our differences we have with Him, and with anyone else.
This oath from God is the ANCHOR OF OUR SOUL!
God knows what He is doing with our lives.
We may get impatient on Him fulfilling His promises, but sometimes God does things for us in His timing.
This “strong consolation” God has for us means that He never wants you to suffer, only to prosper.
Nevertheless, God has purposely arranged things in our lives so that we have to wait for His answers.
Many believe this to be unfair of the Lord, but God is never unfair to His children.
The answer to life’s toughest questions and worries seldom come as quickly as we would want them to.
QUESTION:
Do you have questions that you need an answer to?
God knows the timing His plan requires us to be patient.
Waiting on His plan will us to a greater faith in His oath to us.
QUESTION:
How do I know if I have accepted the oath of God promised to me?
It is when you find yourself looking to no other for your needs.
That is when the Lord has accomplished His greatest desire in you.
When you look to Him exclusively for our needs, you will have found the truest meaning of His oath.
