God's Promise to Us // It's Time to Take the Promised Land, Part 3

It can be really tough. On the one hand, you look at the promises of God and they’re amazing. But on the other, you look at the reality of our own life and think, how could they ever happen for me?

Have you ever struggled, struggled to believe in the promises that people make, even the promises that God makes. In fact in particular the promises that God makes? Over the last few days we've been looking at the human impossibility of the promises that God made to Abraham the father of the nation of Israel and today we're going to take another step along Abraham's journey because he too struggled to believe God’s promises.

But you know something, God has this, this amazing way of leading people like Abraham and you and me through a journey, a journey that we struggle on sometimes but a journey where, ultimately we can believe in God’s promises because if we can't believe them we can never take a hold of them. It's a God thing; it's what faith is all about. First He calls us to believe and then He takes us on a journey through His promises, through the Promised Land.

I'm always so incredibly touched by the story of how God reached out to Abraham. Sure it's a story about Abraham but you know he's not some Mr Perfecto Super Christian, Abraham is human and frail and he struggled to believe the outrageous promises of God, he was torn. God gently and tenderly lead him to believe in the Promised Land.

You see Abraham was 70 something, he had no children, he's living in comfort in this place called Ur and God comes to him and says, "leave all of that, go to a land that I'm going to give you and I'm going to make you a mighty nation. You're going to have more children than the stars in the sky; you're going to have more descendants than the grains of dust on the earth." If we put ourselves in Abraham’s shoes for just a minute, this old man, wouldn't we struggle too?

We're going to be looking at, soon on the program, what it means to cross over into the Promised Land and the battles involved in taking the Promised Land and why God does that. I mean the Promised Land, flowing with milk and honey, wouldn't you think you'd just kind of arrive and it would be like a summer resort with a swimming pool and a bell hop to carry your bags up to your suite? Well, we're going to look at that a bit later but over the next few minutes, well it's time for you and me to consider this Promised Land and whether we believe it.

Faith is the key to the promise, faith is the gift that God gives us to unlock the promise and the reason that you and I are together today no doubt, is that God wants to unlock His promises in our hearts as He breathes His spirit and His faith into us through His word.

You see Israel fled Egypt because they were oppressed as slaves and they passed through the Red Sea and they began this 40 year exodus in the desert. You know how many of the Israelites that crossed through the Red Sea at the beginning of the exodus crossed through the Jordan into the Promised Land 40 years later? Out of the 100's and 1,000's and probably millions, how many? Just 2, Joshua and Caleb, those men believed in God’s promises, what happened to the rest of them? Well Psalm 106 tells us exactly what happened:

They forgot the God who saved them who had done great things in Egypt, miracles in the land of Ham and the awesome deeds by the Red Sea. So God said He would destroy them had not Moses, His chosen one, stood in the breach before them to keep the wrath of God from destroying them.

Then the Israelites despised the pleasant land, they did not believe God’s promise. They grumbled in their tents, they didn't obey the Lord so He swore to them with uplifted hand that He would make them fall in the desert.

That's why today’s program is so important, you see you and I like Abraham, we have circumstances in our lives, we look around and it's really hard to believe that God’s promises could come true. Maybe we even have a grumble about God and His promises, that grumbling, that unbelief is going to keep us out of His Promised Land.

People sometimes say, "Well Berni, you, you talk about this Promised Land, it's obvious what it meant to the Israelites back then but what does it mean to you and me, here and now?" Well as we go from the Old Testament to the New Testament there’s a transition from the physical land to the spiritual one, something that people struggled with when Jesus talked about the Kingdom of God was that they thought Jesus had come to kick the Roman occupiers out of the Promised Land but He was talking about something entirely different.

There are so many passages we could go through in the New Testament but a couple that really explain the Promised Land that God has given us through Jesus, His Son. Well let’s have a look at them; the first one is in Luke chapter 17 beginning at verse 20:

Once, having been asked by the pharaohs is, when the Kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, "The Kingdom of God doesn't come with your careful observation nor will people say, 'here it is' or 'there it is' because the Kingdom of God is within you.

You see the Promised Land that Jesus talked about is not something that’s out there, it's not a new house or a new car or all that stuff, the Promised Land is the Kingdom of God, the rule and the reign and the Lordship of God in our hearts. Again Jesus explained it this way, He said in Matthew chapter 13, verse 44:

The Kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it he hid it again and in his joy he went and sold all that he had and bought that field. Again, the Kingdom of heaven is like a merchant who went looking for fine pearls and when he found one of great value he went away and sold everything he had and he bought it.

See, the Promised Land is like a treasure, it's a treasure in our hearts, it's our relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Our Dad in heaven, hallowed be your name, Your Kingdom come. In John, chapter 14, verse 23 Jesus said:

If anyone loves Me they will obey my teaching and my Father will love them and we will come and make our home with them.

See, plenty of people want to believe in Jesus for their eternal life. "Jesus died for my sin therefore I'm forgiven therefore I have eternal life". And then what they do with that is they take it and they file it in their filing cabinets under "insurance policy" and then live a miserable life. Jesus promised a lot of things, a rich abundant life as well as trials and persecution, He didn't promise us it would be easy to follow after Him.

What He did promise is that the relationship that we have with Him would fill us to overflowing with abundant joy and peace. You see, that's where the Promised Land is today, in our hearts, in our relationship with Him in the abundant life that He promises.

Let me take you back to that starry night where, where God took Abraham out, out of the tent to look up at the Milky Way and to see all the stars and He made him a promise of land and of descendants. You see God led Abraham tenderly to that point and wrote His promise on Abraham’s heart, a promise that Abraham believed against all odds, a promise that God delivered on against all the odds.

You and I are each under our own patch of starry heaven today and the Lord is whispering of His promise Land in our hearts, a land purchased by Jesus on that cross, a land of blessing that goes on forever. The spirit of God will write that on our hearts if we let Him, He'll give us the faith to believe if we'll ask Him. Is today that day?