A Better Promise

Keeping our focus on the Lord’s faithfulness will keep us from being discouraged and depressed. When Israel faced overwhelming threats and attacks they could confidently call on the Lord for their deliverance. They knew they had a “covenant”, a promise or contract, with Almighty God. God had promised to be their GOD and to fight for them, to stand with them, to be their protection and their source of supply. As long as they walked in obedience to God’s word all these blessings were theirs.

Remember when Moses told the Israelites that God had set before them life and death, blessing and cursing? Then Moses said choose life. It was their choice to be a nation of blessed, victorious people. David knew this when he volunteered to fight Goliath – David’s comment, “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine?” Circumcision was a physical sign to the Jewish people that God had made covenant with Abraham and all of his descendants.

You and I have a covenant too. The writer of Hebrews said we have a new covenant with better promises.

“But the work that has been given to Jesus is much greater than the work that was given to those priests. In the same way, the new agreement that Jesus brought from God to his people is much greater than the old one. And the new agreement is based on better promises. 7 If there was nothing wrong with the first agreement, then there would be no need for a second agreement. 8 But God found something wrong with the people. He said, “The time is coming, says the Lord, when I will give a new agreement to the people of Israel and to the people of Judah. 9 It will not be like the agreement that I gave to their fathers. That is the agreement I gave when I took them by the hand and led them out of Egypt. They did not continue following the agreement I gave them, and I turned away from them, says the Lord. 10 This is the new agreement I will give the people of Israel.
I will give this agreement in the future, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their minds, and I will write my laws on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 11 Never again will anyone have to teach their neighbors or their family to know the Lord. All people—the greatest and the least important—will know me. 12 And I will forgive the wrongs they have done, and I will not remember their sins.”
13 God called this a new agreement, so he has made the first agreement old. And anything that is old and useless is ready to disappear.” Hebrews 8:6-13

God the Father is faithful and He made this new covenant for us with Jesus. Neither one of them will fail! Their covenant for us will not fail!

“God is not a man, that He should lie. He is not a son of man, that He should be sorry for what He has said. Has He said, and will He not do it? Has He spoken, and will He not keep His Word?” Numbers 23:19

God promises will come to pass. His word is true – He is good!