Reliable Promise-Keeper!

Numbers 23; Psalms 64–65; Isaiah 13; 1 Peter 1

My computer has a file of photos with a promise from God added. I use it as a slideshow to remind me of what God says about future events and present issues. This morning, I added this one: “O you who hear prayer, to you shall all flesh come.” (Psalm 65:2) This connects prayer to people coming to God through faith in Christ. It is a promise!

In Numbers, Balaam was charged to curse God’s people, but God would not allow it. Balaam knew the Lord made and kept His promises. He said, “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?” (Numbers 23:19)

The psalmist knew it too. His poetic description of the power of God puts joy in my heart and confidence that every promise God makes, He will keep . . .  

By awesome deeds you answer us with righteousness, O God of our salvation, the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas; the one who by his strength established the mountains, being girded with might; who stills the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, the tumult of the peoples, so that those who dwell at the ends of the earth are in awe at your signs. You make the going out of the morning and the evening to shout for joy. (Psalm 65:5–8)

Isaiah also writes of a promise that God gave him; He would judge Babylon for their ruthless treatment of His people. He recorded this promise when Assyria was about to attack that area and the coming devastation would have a tremendous impact on Israel and other nations of the Near East. The culmination came when Sennacherib, king of Assyria, sacked the city of Babylon in 689 B.C., thus showing that Babylon, the greatest city in its day, was not immune to the advancing Assyrians, all in the plan of God.

This prophecy came true yet as I read it, I thought of the modern Jewish man who believes in Jesus as his Messiah and who said that God works in patterns. Will this be a pattern for judgment on Babylon again? It is in modern day Iraq.

Wail, for the day of the Lord is near; as destruction from the Almighty it will come! Therefore all hands will be feeble, and every human heart will melt. They will be dismayed: pangs and agony will seize them; they will be in anguish like a woman in labor. They will look aghast at one another; their faces will be aflame. Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land a desolation and to destroy its sinners from it. For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be dark at its rising, and the moon will not shed its light. I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will put an end to the pomp of the arrogant and lay low the pompous pride of the ruthless. I will make people more rare than fine gold, and mankind than the gold of Ophir. Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will be shaken out of its place, at the wrath of the Lord of hosts in the day of his fierce anger. (Isaiah 13:6–13)

The New Testament tells how those OT prophets were given the task of telling God’s people of His will, often revealing the immediate or distant future. Most important, they knew the Messiah would come . . .

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look. (1 Peter 1:10–12)

These men of God did not fully understand all that the Holy Spirit authored through them. It was the Spirit who predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow, encouraging readers that Christ’s suffering would be followed by glory just as they also would experience glory after their suffering. Isn’t part of that glory seeing all flesh coming to Him! Those prophets did understand they were not writing for themselves but for those who would live later and who would hear and believe the gospel.

APPLY: Simply worship God! He always has kept His promises and He will never change His plans.