Waiting on the Promises of God
Download MP3So this is the, Advent season, which means a couple of things. If, you're one of our musicians, I noticed it means that you have about 20 chord changes for every song. I feel sorry for them, words you can't pronounce, but you're at least for the next few weeks is no longer 3 chords in the truth. It also means that we are going to be taking a break from our series of going through the gospel through Mark, and we're going to be looking at, some of the promises in the Old Testament and how they find their fulfillment in Christ. And so this morning, we're gonna look at a couple of passages in Genesis, one passage from 2nd Samuel 7.
Joel Brooks:But to get us started, I want to read just 2 verses from 2nd Peter chapter 3. It's there in your worship guide. But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord, one day is as a 1000 years, and a 1000 years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. This is the word of the Lord.
Joel Brooks:You would pray with me. Father, in the season of waiting, we want to thank you for waiting on us and the patience you have shown towards us. We would not be here apart from your patience. Father, we thank you for the gift of your son, Jesus. He's the reason we are gathered here together to celebrate the new life that He has given us, the life that we find in Him, the life we have in this present moment, and in the future to come.
Joel Brooks:So I pray that in this time my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But, Lord, may your words remain, and may they change us. And we pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. So if you were to ask me how long I was willing to wait for something, I would tell you, well, I can't answer such an open ended question.
Joel Brooks:What exactly am I waiting for? Because that's gonna determine how long I'm willing to wait. If it's how long am I willing to wait for, a website to download, it's gonna be about 5 seconds. And, then I'm gonna hit refresh, refresh, refresh, and then I'll get the rainbow kinda wheel of death there. But I have little patience for that.
Joel Brooks:If you were to ask me how long I would wait, to to find a table, have a table at a restaurant, 30 minutes. Maybe 45 minutes if it's a really good restaurant. How long I would wait to get a package from Amazon that has to come all the way across the globe and be delivered to my front door? 2 days. After 2 days, it's amazing.
Joel Brooks:I I just think, oh, I mean, why? Why even wait? You know, but what am I gonna do? What where else could I possibly go and get something faster? If you were to ask me how long I'm willing to wait on some relationship, maybe to blossom a friendship to mature, I'm willing to wake a long time, months, years for that.
Joel Brooks:I waited a long time to to get married. Lauren and I dated for 7 years. One of the things that you find is typically the the greater, the greater the value is of what you want, the longer you're willing to wait. And the longer you're willing to wait with patience. So we've been waiting as Christians for 2000 years for Jesus to return.
Joel Brooks:2000 years. That is a long, long time to wait. Will it be worth it? When I was going through the book of Ecclesiastes, preaching through that not too long ago, I shared from the pulpit that I had recently gone through just, a little period of doubt, season of doubt caught me off guard. If you remember, I I I talked about, you know, I've never struggled with a doubt my entire life.
Joel Brooks:I mean, I pretty much grew up in the church. My mom's, she was a church organist for over 50 years. My dad, you know, there every Sunday. So I was every Sunday morning, Sunday evening, Wednesday, and and who knows in between, always at church, grew up in that family devotions at night. I didn't struggle with doubt.
Joel Brooks:It was just kind of who I was. I knew the Christian faith. I believed in God. And so, that's why it surprised me that just a few years ago, doubt hit, and it blindsided me how how fast it came and how furious it came. And one of the things that led to that doubt was why hasn't Christ returned?
Joel Brooks:It's been 2000 years. If Jesus really was who he said he was, if he really was the son of God, wouldn't he have returned by now? And I couldn't get that thought out of my mind. I mean, we've been waiting for a long long time as Christians. 2000 years, that's 75 to 80 generations.
Joel Brooks:That's 80 generations of parents telling their children the Christmas story. Eighty generations of telling them about the death and resurrection of Jesus. Eighty generations of telling them the promise of Jesus. Eighty generations of telling them the promise that Jesus said he would come back. And I told them that same stories, those same stories to my children.
Joel Brooks:Was I a fool for believing them? Was I a fool for teaching them to my children? Would Jesus really, if He was the Son of God, be slow so slow in keeping His promise? So I'm not sure if any of you have ever had those doubts. I'm not gonna make you raise your hand or not if you've ever had any doubts like that.
Joel Brooks:But I want you to know your pastor has. Your pastor has had those doubts. And apparently, the early church did as well. I wasn't alone in my doubts. As the witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus, those witnesses began to die off.
Joel Brooks:People began wondering, is Christ gonna return? When is he gonna return? Why hasn't he returned? Why is he so slow in keeping his promise? And therefore, Peter wrote the words that we just read.
Joel Brooks:Do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a 1000 years, and a 1000 years is one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promises, as some count slowness. In other words, if you're an eternal being, you work on a different timetable than us mere mortals. The person who's taught me the most about this passage is actually my wife. Every time she says, it will just be 2 seconds.
Joel Brooks:And and at that moment, I realized I'm just a mere mortal, and she operates at a different timetable. And 2 seconds is 2 hours. I don't know what it is in in mortal time. Anyway, those are those are the doubts I had. Why hasn't Christ returned?
Joel Brooks:One of the things that helped me through these doubts was to go back to the Old Testament and to look again at what God's timetable was for fulfilling his promises. Did he fulfill his promises quickly, or was he slow as I would count slowness? When I went back to them, I was reminded of this one thing, God makes his people wait. Waiting is a theme throughout the entire old Testament. It's a major theme.
Joel Brooks:Rarely does God ever make a promise to someone and instantly fulfill it. And what you usually find is the greater the promise, the longer he is gonna make his people wait. And he made people wait for a long, long time for the first advent or for the first arrival of the Messiah. And so it makes sense that we would have to wait a long, long time for the second advent. Apparently, God thinks that having us wait on His promises is just as important as having Him fulfill his promises.
Joel Brooks:He does something in us in the waiting just as much as he does in the fulfilling. And what I want us to do is look back at some of these big promises that God made to some of the Old Testament saints here, and see how God kept his word and how long it took him to keep his word. And to start us off, we're gonna go all the way back to the first pages of your Bible. We're gonna look at the first promise we have of God. I'm gonna go back to the story of Adam and Eve.
Joel Brooks:After Adam and Eve sinned against God, if you remember the very first thing they did was hide. They hid from one another by by putting on some, some leaves as clothing. So they they hid from one another, and then they tried to hide from God. It reminds me when I was, studying this, I was just thinking back to my kids when they were little, And, and we would play hide and seek. And so if you've ever been to our house, we've our house is 2 stories.
Joel Brooks:The kids' bedrooms are upstairs. And sometimes I would go to the steps, the bottom step, and I would just do this. And instantly, I'd hear feet going crazy, because that meant the tickle monster was coming. And it was just boom, boom. And the pitter patter of feet just running everywhere.
Joel Brooks:I I still miss that sound of of hearing the kids scurry everywhere. And I would slowly come up the steps, and they would all hide from me. And they were terrible at hiding because they were kids. And so you you go and and somebody's hiding under a chair, but the feet are sticking out. And then you have my youngest, Georgia.
Joel Brooks:Sometimes she would just hide in the middle of the floor. Georgia, we were talking about this earlier, and she just would throw a blanket over her. And I would always make sure to find her last, so she would feel better about herself and her hiding place. She always thought she was doing so good. It I mean, it's it's humorous to think a child can hide from from his or her father.
Joel Brooks:That's what Adam and Eve did. They they thought we could we could hide. And here we see for the first time how God is gonna react when we rebel against him. How's God gonna react when we sin against him, when we've we've harmed him, we've disobeyed him? And what we see is God is like a father seeking out his children.
Joel Brooks:He sought them out not to kill them. He sought them out to say, hey. What you did was wrong. Can't get around that, but I'm gonna do something to restore this relationship. That's those are the first words that God speaks after the fall.
Joel Brooks:They're words of reconciliation. And so that's what we read here in Genesis 3. God makes a promise as to how he's gonna rid the world of evil and make the world right again. And so this promise here that we're about to read, it's it's God speaking to the serpent who had deceived Eve, and the reason that the all of humanity fell. And we read these words in Genesis 3:15.
Joel Brooks:I will put enmity between you, this is the serpent, and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. God here, he tells the serpent that, you and Eve are going to war. Your descendants are, they're going to war. And what's going to happen is is at some point, you're going to bite one of Eve's descendants, one of her offspring on the heel, but then he's going to turn around and he's going to crush your head and gonna do away with evil forever.
Joel Brooks:So that's the promise. It's If you want the fancy term for it, it's called the protoevangel, which is called the first gospel. The first hint of the gospel we have in the bible, Genesis 3:15, the first promise God makes, And it's one of ridding the world of evil. Now immediately after this, we read that Eve had a child. And Eve is immediately, she's she's thinking, this is the one.
Joel Brooks:This is the serpent crusher. God made a promise. God's gonna fulfill the promise. No waiting. Anyone here named Cain?
Joel Brooks:No. Cain was not the promised child. Actually, we have one person at our church who has Cain as a middle name. I want to hear the backstory of that. I wondered how did that happen, and I want you to also stay away from me as you're you're telling me that backstory.
Joel Brooks:But Cain was obviously not the serpent crusher. And here, we see for the first time, God is gonna have us wait on the fulfillment of his promises. For the first time, we realize that God's timetable and humanity's timetable are 2 different timetables. And so, God is gonna have humans wait 1,000 of years before he fulfills that promise through his son, Jesus. But here we see early on in the first pages of scripture that waiting is a part of God's plan.
Joel Brooks:Yet, as Peter tells us, the Lord is not slow concerning his promises. This theme of waiting is seen again, the next big promise we have in scripture which comes in Genesis chapter 12. This is God's promise that he makes to Abraham. So in Genesis 12, humans begin spreading all around the world and taking their sin with them. And so evil is spreading along with humanity, and God decides, okay, I'm still gonna redeem the world, but now he focuses his plan on redemption to one person, Abraham.
Joel Brooks:It's going to be through him. And so he comes to Abraham and he promises Abraham several things. First thing he promises him is that, hey, I'm gonna take you to a land and there you're gonna become a great nation. 2nd, I'm gonna make you famous. Everyone's gonna know your who you are.
Joel Brooks:3rd, the entire world is gonna be blessed through you. It's a pretty big promise. It's there in your worship guide. Let's read those first three verses of Genesis 12. Now the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.
Joel Brooks:And I will make of you a great nation. And I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of earth shall be blessed. That's a pretty huge promise.
Joel Brooks:And yet, we read that Abraham believed God. He believed his promise, and then he had to wait. God makes this promise, Abraham believes this promise, and then nothing happens. Not only did Abraham have to wait to become a great nation, he and Sarah had to wait a long time just to have one child. It was 25 years before Sarah got pregnant.
Joel Brooks:I mean, have you ever waited 25 years for anything? Lauren and I, when we first got married, just, 2, 3 years in a marriage, we decided, okay. We wanna have a family. And we thought, it's kinda like flipping a switch. You want a family?
Joel Brooks:Flip. Okay. We we now we have a family. That didn't happen. And so, month after month went by, in which Lauren didn't get pregnant, and then it was year after year.
Joel Brooks:And all during this time, I mean, like every month was a fresh disappointment. Could you imagine waiting 25 years after God had said, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do this. I mean, Lord and I didn't have the promise of God. They had the promise of God.
Joel Brooks:Wouldn't that cause you to think, isn't God, are you are you fooling me? God, are can you really keep your word? And they'd already been waiting a long time. They were already old. They had given up long ago the thought of having children, and they had come to peace with that.
Joel Brooks:But then God comes along and stirs up hope in them. Now they're wondering, were we a fool forever believing that he would do this? Sometimes they waited patiently. Sometimes they didn't wait patiently. But God made them wait 25 years before they had Isaac.
Joel Brooks:And then they had Isaac and nothing. No more kids. No more great nation. Didn't have a promised land. Matter of fact, when Abraham died, the only land he owned was Sarah's funeral plot.
Joel Brooks:That was it. He didn't own the promised land there. And as for this whole world being blessed through Abraham, I'm honestly not sure if a person outside of a 100 miles even knew his name. No blessing. He certainly wasn't famous.
Joel Brooks:It would be 2,000 more years before God would answer that promise, fulfill that promise He made to Abraham by sending Jesus, by giving Him a descendant that would come and would bless the entire world. Yet, we read, the Lord is not slow to fulfill His promises, as some of us count slowness. Next big promise we'll look at is that made to king David. That's a 1000 years now after Abraham. A 1000 years after Abraham, God, he made a promise to David.
Joel Brooks:1st, he came to David and he made a promise when David was just a small child, and he said, David, you're gonna you're gonna become king. And then nothing. 15 years go by of David just waiting to become king. You're starting to get a pattern now. God makes a promises.
Joel Brooks:He goes on to make you wait, almost as a way of preparing for a much longer waiting for an even greater promise. David, you're gonna be king. David's probably 15 years old. 13, 15, whatever years old it is. He's gotta wait twice his life in order for that promise to be fulfilled.
Joel Brooks:But, what he's when he's finally sitting on the throne, God then comes to him and makes another promise. This one a lot greater. David, your kingdom is never ever going to end. I'm gonna put a child of yours on the throne, and that child's gonna reign forever. That's a huge promise.
Joel Brooks:All of Israel knew about this promise. All of Israel had to be excited about this promise. How can you not be excited about it? And yet all of Israel had to wait for the next 400 years, 40 Kings come and go. 40 kings coming and going and dying off.
Joel Brooks:And then they had to watch as their kingdom was destroyed, And as all of God's people were carried off into exile, and they're thinking where in the world is like God's promise? How is it gonna be fulfilled? I love the song that we opened up the service with, oh, come, oh, come, Emmanuel. Because the base has one line in there in which we are singing to. We are singing to Israel as they were watching all of their hopes and dreams of God's promise, they think, vanishing before their eyes as they were being carried off into exile.
Joel Brooks:We read, oh come, oh come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel that mourns and lowly exile here until the Son of God appears. Rejoice. Rejoice. Emmanuel shall come to thee, o Israel. But if you're Israel, you're thinking, oh, yeah?
Joel Brooks:When? When is he coming to us? When is he gonna ransom us? They would have to wait another 600 years for the promise of David to be fulfilled, for a son of his to be born in the city of David and laid in a manger. And yet, the Lord is not slow to fulfill His promises as some of us count slowness.
Joel Brooks:But be honest, it feels kinda slow, doesn't it? I mean, it feels really slow. So, the question is, why does God wait so long to fulfill his promises? Why does, why does he make a promise and just have you wait? What's what's what's the point of that?
Joel Brooks:What's the purpose in us having to wait? I mean what if, let's just do a total hypothetical here. What if after Adam and Eve sinned, God went to Adam and Eve and said, hey, I promise I'm gonna make everything right. And then then and there, he just kinda crushes the servant, makes atonement, and everything is right. What if in that moment, he went ahead and he restored all things?
Joel Brooks:I mean, I can think of a lot of positives with that plan. I mean, first, you would avoid 1,000 of years of suffering. 2nd, your Bibles would be a lot shorter. I mean, think of it like, you know, come February, you all give up on your Bible reading plans. You know, you you get to Leviticus and Numbers, you're reading about boils with pus and white hairs.
Joel Brooks:None of that is needed. It's none of that exists. You could probably read your bible every single night, just a few pages. So there's there's some pluses to that plan. So why did God choose not to do that?
Joel Brooks:Why why all the drama that we see? Well, I could tell you that waiting on God, it builds in us faith. It builds character in us. And, that's 100% true. You show me someone who has never waited on anything, and I will show you the most shallow narcissistic person to ever exist.
Joel Brooks:Waiting develops that faith, develops that character in us. And God certainly used waiting to do that in his people throughout the centuries. But that's a sermon for another day. What I do wanna do is just mention the most obvious reason why, but often the most overlooked reason why. I'm actually not sure I've ever heard a sermon on this.
Joel Brooks:Maybe because it's too obvious. But, the reason that God waited to fulfill His promises is because of you. He waited because of you. You would never have come into existence if He had immediately answered the promises He gave to Adam and Eve, the promise he gave to Abraham, the promise he gave to King David. You are the reason God has not yet fulfilled all of his promises.
Joel Brooks:If God had not waited for 1,000 upon 1,000 of years, you would have never come into existence. You would have never come to know him. He waited for you. And the reason that Adam and Eve and Moses, you know, and, and King David, all of them had to patiently endure and to to suffer. The reason they had to do that is so their eternal family could be expanded, so that we would get to be with them.
Joel Brooks:They waited for us. So I know there's all these other purposes in waiting, life. Sometimes it's literally the creation of a new life with a baby being born, and sometimes this is from an adult being reborn, coming to repentance, and God's spirit rebirthing in him a new life. But our waiting results in life. I mean, what if Jesus had returned a year ago?
Joel Brooks:You know, a year ago, you're you're, you know, probably during the Advent season, you're praying, Maranatha, come, Lord Jesus, come. Come now. Maybe you're having a particularly bad day, and you're really wanting, Jesus, come. And he didn't. What if he had?
Joel Brooks:Do you realize we've had 24 new babies born in the last 4 months at Redeemer? The waiting resulted in life. 24 more souls, that will spend eternity in the presence of God in fullness of joy. 24 more souls joining the chorus of eternity. Waiting resulted in life.
Joel Brooks:The truth is this. We should be getting down on our knees, praising God for his slowness to answer his promises. God, thank you for being slow to fulfill your word because it resulted in me. So so God's slowness is as we count slowness. It builds in us character, builds in us faith, and it also brings about new life.
Joel Brooks:It's worth the wait. I was thinking through this actually hit me this morning as I was reading through this again. You actually find another place in Scripture, something close to what Peter says in 2nd Peter 3, when he says, the Lord isn't slow. And he says, you know, a day to a 1000 years to the Lord, to us is like a day to the Lord. You actually find something close to that one other place in Scripture.
Joel Brooks:And it's in Genesis 29, when Jacob is working 7 years in order that he might marry Rachel. Says that Jacob loved Rachel so much. He worked for her for 7 years. He said, the 7 years because he loved her so much seemed like but a few days. I love that because God looked at us and He knew that waiting meant us.
Joel Brooks:He said, waiting 1,000 and 1,000 of years that He might have the love of His life, us, Seems like a few days. It's worth it. It was worth it for God. And then God makes this promise. He says, and you're not gonna have to wait alone.
Joel Brooks:The people, the old testament saints, whenever God made these promises to them, he would also say this. He goes, and I'm with you. All the time he kept saying, and I'm with you. I am with you. As you're waiting for me to physically come to this world, know that that I'm still gonna my spirit's gonna still be there with you as you wait.
Joel Brooks:And we as Christians have the exact same promise. Jesus has left, and He says, until I come again, you're not gonna wait alone. I'm sending my Spirit to be with you. We don't have to wait alone. So, knowing those things, that we don't wait alone, we wait with the spirit.
Joel Brooks:And, knowing what's awaiting us that it's worth the wait, we could wait with joy and patience. Can't we? Let's pray. Father, our prayer still is, Maranatha, come Lord Jesus. But we also trust in Your timetable.
Joel Brooks:Indeed, we can rejoice in your timetable. And right now, I want to publicly thank you for your slowness in fulfilling your promises. It's allowed me to be in this place. It's allowed all of us to be here and to be your children. Thank You for Your slowness.
Joel Brooks:And Lord, during this time, we do ask that You would bring many to repentance, that they might come to know You as we wait for You. We pray this in the name of sweet Jesus, our present and our future King. Amen.
