Believing in the Promises

“46 Therefore He came again to Cana of Galilee where He had made the water wine. And there was a royal official whose son was sick at Capernaum. 47 When he heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee, he went to Him and was imploring Him to come down and heal his son; for he was at the point of death. 48 So Jesus said to him, ‘Unless you people see signs and wonders, you simply will not believe.’  49 The royal official said to Him, ‘Sir, come down before my child dies.’ 50 Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your son lives.’ The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started off. 51 As he was now going down, his slaves met him, saying that his son was living. 52 So he inquired of them the hour when he began to get better. Then they said to him, ‘Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.’ 53 So the father knew that it was at that hour in which Jesus said to him, ‘Your son lives’; and he himself believed and his whole household. 54 This is again a second sign that Jesus performed when He had come out of Judea into Galilee.”          John 4:46-54

As a premillennialist, I believe there are seven different dispensations that cover the entire gamut of human history: Innocence, Conscience, Human Government, Promise, Law, Grace, and The Kingdom. Dispensations are ages of history when God uniquely deals with His people. For example, in Genesis 2, in the age of Innocence, God has a unique relationship with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Then in Genesis 3, things changed because of the failure of Adam and Eve and God removed them from the Garden and the Age of Conscience began. The fourth of these, Promise, centers on Abraham and the unconditional promises God made to him. Because many of these promises have not yet been fulfilled, it is still relevant today. Paul spoke extensively of Abraham and God’s promises to him as part of the new covenant age in Romans and Galatians. During the old covenant age (the Law), Jews were directed by the requirements of the Law of Moses and the promises of God were not the priority. 

Learning how to believe in the promises of God is not an easy task. It requires believing that the promised event is possible and that the one promising it can and will accomplish it. That is what makes the event in John 4 so remarkable. Here we have a gentile, a royal official asking Jesus to come to heal his son from a deadly condition. The account tells us that he came himself rather than sending a servant which suggests the level of concern for his son as well as his confidence that Jesus was the answer. He originally asked Jesus to come to the place where his son was, but Jesus told him, “Go, your son lives”. This gentile believed it immediately and resumed his plans as if the deed was a reality. As a fact, he found out later from his slaves that his son was healed the very moment that Jesus pronounced it. Jesus became Messiah to him and his whole household. 

He is both willing and able

A similar event occurs in Matthew 8:5-13 with the healing of the servant of a Roman centurion in Capernaum. In this instance, Jesus offered to come, but the centurion made his famous statement, “Lord, I am not worthy for You to come under my roof, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed”. He continued by recognizing what authority is and acknowledging that Jesus had the authority to heal simply by speaking the word and it would be done. And Jesus commended his statement by saying “Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel”. Here is another non-Jew, demonstrating more faith than a Jew.

And then there was the leper in Matthew 8:1-3, approaching Jesus with this statement, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean”. He acknowledged that Jesus was able and the only question in the leper’s mind was His willingness to do it. Of course, we know that Jesus responded “I am willing; be cleansed” and healed the man. Believing in the promises means believing that He is both willing and able. It means that the believer acknowledges that Jesus is God, fully capable to fulfill His promises and that it will happen if He promised it.

God will provide 

There is a no more notable example of this kind of faith than that of Abraham in Genesis 22, when He is told by God to offer His promised son, Isaac on an altar on Mount Moriah to the Lord. The account suggests no wavering on Abraham’s part, but rather he got up early the next morning and brought Isaac, servants, and split wood for the offering and travelled more than two days to get there. As the two of them walked together, Isaac asked his father where the lamb was to be sacrificed? Abraham’s response is profound: “God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son” (verse 8). But where did this kind of faith come from?

In the book of Hebrews, we get a chance to go behind the scenes, “the rest of the story” as Paul Harvey would say and see what was on his mind when he chose to believe God. Hebrews 11:19 says, “He considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead, from which he also received him back as a type”. Abraham actually believed that; because the promises God made to him were to be fulfilled through Isaac, God would have to raise him from the dead. Of course, we know that God did not require Isaac’s sacrifice, but was testing Abraham’s faith in the promises of God. In fact, the Lord says that “I now know that you fear God”. God was demonstrating to Abraham and to all of us the depth of Abraham’s willingness to trust Him. Believing in the promises means we are all in and are holding nothing back!

We also see in this account a picture of the Father and the Son and the Father’s willingness to offer His Son for us (John 3:16). It testifies to us that He is willing.

Blessings of Abraham

God made some amazing promises to Abram in Genesis 12, when He told him to leave Haran and go to a land Abram knew nothing of. And it is there that Abram, later to be Abraham, would come and begin to receive the blessings. God made many promises to Abram and Abraham, as expressed by M. F. Unger in his Bible Dictionary, including the following fourfold blessing: “(1) increase into a numerous people; (2) material and spiritual prosperity-"I will bless you"; (3) the exaltation of Abraham's name-"make your name great"; (4) Abraham was not only to be blessed by God, but to be a blessing to others, implicitly by the coming of the Messiah through his descendants (Genesis 12:1-3)”.

Paul refers specifically to these promises in both Galatians and Romans and their impact on new covenant believers. His perspective is that the promises God made to Abraham occurred hundreds of years before the Law of Moses and the Law does not invalidate all those promises He made to Abraham. He speaks of inheritance as the means by which the believer receives the blessings of the covenant God made to Abraham more than 4,000 years ago. In fact, according to Galatians 3:16, “Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, ‘And to seeds,’ as referring to many, but rather to one, ‘And to your seed,’ that is, Christ.”. So then, the agency of receiving these promises is faith in Jesus Christ, as part of our inheritance, as it says in verse 22, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe”. 

Believing the unbelievable

Paul emphasizes in Romans 4 that because it is by faith, it must also be in accordance with grace in verse 16 as the means by which believers in Christ receive the benefits of these promises. For it was Abraham who pioneered the way for all believers in Christ to live by faith, as if God’s promises would come true. His faith did not waver because he held on to the promise that he and Sarah would have a child of their own, even though it was physically impossible. It would happen because God said it would happen. The only unanswered question was when! Verse 21 tells us that Abraham became fully assured or persuaded that when God promises something, it undoubtedly will happen. His faith becomes our faith by believing that Jesus, the seed is the Christ, that He accomplished full payment for our sins (speaks of worthiness), and that He is coming back to set things straight for the church and the Jews.

In Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”. It tells us that God’s unanswered promises will come true and that He is not lying about what He says He has already accomplished. The Greek word for conviction is “elegchos” and it means certain persuasion. Just like Abraham, believers in Christ become “fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to perform” (Romans 4:21). This quality of faith can only happen once one believes that the promised event is possible and that the One promising it can and will accomplish it. He must believe in the character of the One making the promises, that He will be faithful even when the believer is not (2Timothy 2:13).

Children of the promise

Paul tells us in Galatians 4:28 that, like Isaac, we are children of promise. He tells us that we must not become offspring of the standards of righteousness achieved by human effort, but only by putting our full confidence in the righteousness of Jesus Christ can we receive our promised inheritance. Works programs do not afford us any benefits with God. In fact, Romans 9:6-8 tells us that not all Israel are considered children of God, but only those who are children of the promise. We must learn not to be influenced by those who hold onto the works of the Law as a means of righteousness, but “cast out” those who would negatively influence our walk of faith by grace. 

One of the most important lessons a believer in Christ must learn is how to wait. When God doesn’t act as quickly as we would like, we get anxious and want to take matters into our own hands. But 2Peter 3:9 says that, “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance”. He wants us to exercise patience and he will reward that patience as James 1:12 says, “Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial”. We are to look for the “blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior (Titus 2:13) and “walk by faith and not by sight” (2Corinthians 5:7).