FBCWest 711 | Promises
Recorded On: 05/10/2026
Bulletin
Hymn #208 “Like a River Glorious”
SCRIPTURE READING – Revelation 22:1 - 7
Giving of Selves and Our Offerings
OFFERTORY PRAYER
OFFERTORY MUSIC – Pru Hungate
Praise and Worship
“Endless Light”
“Good Grace”
“Resurrecting”
Proclamation of the Word
Message by Pastor Joe
“Promises”
PRAYER TIME / Time of Reflection
“Your Promises”
Acknowledgements and Announcements
Sermon Notes
Hebrews 10:23 Jesus is faithful
1 John 2:25 Eternal life
John 11:23 – 27 Belief in Jesus we then receive His resurrection and life
1 Corinthians15:35 – 58 A new body
2 Corinthians 5:1 – 10 We to get a permanent and eternal body
2 Peter 1:2 – 4 Will have a divine nature
Romans 8:26 & 27 The Spirit prays for us according to the will of God
Romans 8:28 He causes all things to work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose
Romans 8:35 – 39 Nothing can separate us from God’s love
Matthew 18:20 Jesus is there if just 2 or 3 are gathered in His name
Matthew 19:29 Whatever you give up for Jesus, He will reward you many times more
Matthew 28:19 & 20 Jesus will be with us even to the end of the age
Scritpures
Transcript of Service
Has anyone ever failed to keep a promise they made to you? Or even a more personal question, have you ever failed to keep a promise that you've made to somebody else? Today we're going to take a look at a number of promises, not all of them, that God is made to us. When it comes to promises that others rely on their ability and the dependency on that person, we're going to take a look at how God is faithful in all of His promises. It used to be people of our word.
If you said something, that was good enough. Then we moved to a handshake. Then we moved to where now you have to have a 57 page agreement to make sure you've outlined all the terms and conditions of what you should be doing. So much so that from my father, when you ask him a question, he had three basic answers. Yes, which means you can do it. No, which means you can't do it.
Or we'll see, which is, I'm not going to say yes because if something prevents me from allowing you, I'm not going to violate my word. But now in our content today, we even have a phrase called, for instance, the California yes. What is the California yes? The California yes is somebody invites you to a party. And you say yes. You might intend to go.
You might not intend to go, but you don't want to tell them no because you want to have a conversation. So you say yes and then you don't show up because I just didn't want to deal with the no. So the question is a people of all word. Fortunately, we serve a God who keeps his word. He's made several promises to those who follow him, to those who love him, to those who are called after and he's made these promises. Fortunately God is not like us. He says what he means and means what he says.
And so we're going to take a look at some of his promises so that we might take courage to be allowed to continue on in some times of the struggles of our lives knowing that his word is true. But first I want to set the statement and the promises by the first Bible reference. And so we're going to go through a number of scriptures and you may, whatever.
So I want to encourage you to write the scriptures down to review them in the future. And so the first one is Hebrews chapter 10. And it says, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering.
For he who promised is faithful. So we can believe what God says because he's faithful when he promises things. The scripture says that it is impossible for God. He's not a man is too lie. And so the things that we can say if God says something kind of like my father, he said, yes, it's a no or so we'll see.
But God doesn't say something that he doesn't mean he is faithful. So if he, to me, he doesn't even need to necessarily make a promise. All God needs to say is X, I love you. That should be good enough. He should not have to say I promise that I love you, that I have loved you and that I will love you, that he says something we should be able to take hold of that and believe it and be comforted by it. So the first promise I want to talk about is in Fountain 1st John chapter 2, verse 25. So this is a promise which he himself has made to us.
Jesus the Son of God, God has made this promise like I said, he didn't have to promise it. He could simply say the promise he has made to us is eternal life. That there's more to this life than this life. That should give us encouragement and hope. This is all that there is. Solomon is right. Everything is vanity under the sun.
It's not worth it. You can be successful. You can be unsuccessful. You can be popular.
You can be unpopular. It just doesn't matter. Jesus has made this life matter because we have eternal life. And then in John chapter 11, 23 to 27, this is this.
And Jesus said to her, and he's talking to Martha when Martha's brother said had died. And he had delayed his coming to them for four days and he's having this conversation to it. Jesus said to her, your brother will rise again. And Martha said to him, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection of the last day. Send the theology of it. I'm still suffering. I'm still crying and whatever. But I understand that there is a theological tenant that says that there is a resurrection.
And Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, even if he dies. And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.
Jesus says, Lazarus and all of us who believe in him will have this eternal life. So he says, I make this promise and how is it that you acquire eternal life, that you believe that I am the resurrection and the life. If you believe this and then he doesn't leave it, he goes, do you believe this? And she said to him, yes, Lord, I have believed that you are the Christ, the Son of God comes into the world.
So Martha has gone from theology to reality. I believe someday that there will be a resurrection to, I believe you are the resurrection and the life. That if I commit myself to you, I will have and that is the promise. Now notice Jesus say, if you believe me and you follow the next 10 items on my list of things that you have to do to acquire eternal life, he goes, if you believe that I am the resurrection and the life, you will never die. The promise made and a promise kept because in the first few moments Lazarus is going to come out of that grave, but there is going to be a day when Lazarus' body will die again, but on the resurrection someday see, he will come out of that grave as well.
And Corinthians chapter 15 verses 35 through 58 makes another promise. That promise that we will have a new body. Now living eternally sounds great initially, but when you get to, I am going to say a little older than me and people who are sick and in pain and have lived a long life, they don't, they want to go home. And home isn't their four bedroom house, it's heaven, the mansion prepared for them. But they're tired of this life. If you had just, your body didn't change right now, my back hurts. I don't want to live eternally with my back hurting.
I don't want to have sinus infections and other sicknesses, whatever, do these things. Jesus, I'm going to give you eternal life because I'm going to promise you something else. You're going to live eternally, but you're going to have to live it in this body that is subject to sin and shame and pain and heartache and death. So he says, but someone will say, how are the dead raised? And with what kind of, and then Paul says something quite unnice, you fool. To which of you so's does not come to life unless it dies. And that what you sow, you did not sow the body which is to be, but a bear grain perhaps of wheat and else. But God gives it a body just as He wished.
And to each of the seeds, it's own body of its own. Our flesh is not the same flesh, but there's one flesh of men and another of fish and another of beasts and another flesh of birds and another fish. There are also heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one and the glory of the earthly is another. There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars for stars different from stars in glory. Each of its own magnitude of light that arrives here. So he goes, so also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sewn a perishable body.
It dies. It withers. It gets wrinkles. It has all the pain. It is raised an imperishable body.
He goes, I'm not only promising you eternal life, but I'm promising you a different body in which to express this eternal life. And it will have a different glory than the one and now has. It is sewn in and it is raised in glory. I mean, what?
We go from this to a glorious body. It is sewn in weakness. It is raised in power. It is a natural body.
It is raised a spiritual body. If there's a natural body, there's also a spiritual body. All saying, if one happens, then so will the next. Just as you sew a seat of wheat, you don't get another seat of wheat. You get a stock of wheat. But also it is written, the first man Adam became a living soul. The last Adam became a living, a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not the first, but the natural in the spiritual.
All saying, we don't start out with a spiritual body. We control one. That's what God gave us with the first Adam. But after the second Adam, he's going to give us this spiritual body that will have this glory. The first man is from the earth. The second man is from heaven. Because the earthlings are the earthlings and is the heavenly, so also are the heavenly. He's saying, in essence, you are put on this earth as a human body because this human body was designed for this earth which was broken in vain, but you will be designed in heaven.
Even if we took this body, we would be uncomfortable there because we would be out of the norm. We are now going to be heavenly bodies, also all of the heavenly. Just as we've born the image of the earth, we will also bear the image of the heavenly. We initially bore the image of God, but with Adam's sin, he messed it up.
But God's going to reform us to be in the image of Christ. Now I say to this brethren, slash in blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. No, there's a perishable inherit, the imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep. We will not all die. But we will all be changed.
Not some of us who believers will be changed. We will be changed. And how long will it take in a moment in the twinkling of an eye? You could not use a stopwatch, fast enough, to time the twinkling of an eye.
At the last trumpet, you'll for for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable. So when do we know this promise is going to be fulfilled at the resurrection at the time that Jesus comes again? And we will be changed. Maybe we will be changed for this perishable must put on the imperishable. And this mortal must put on immortality.
But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable and this mortal will have put on immortality, then we'll come about the saying that is written, death is swallowed up and big. That bunch of words basically say, when this body that is broken and gets sick and dies is changed into this new body, which is glorious and heavenly, which is done in the twinkling of an eye, death is no more. Three over death. Oh, death, where is your sting? Oh, death, where is your victory? Oh, death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sinned. And the power of sin is a law.
But thanks be to God. Gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. We don't need a promise there. God says he will give us the victory, not because we earned it, not because we deserved it, but because he gave us the victory through Lord.
Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast and movable, always abounding in the works of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord. So, if I'm following up, all of these things God is going to do, so he goes, God, keep on keeping on, keep the faith, do those things, don't faith be moved, because God will not let your work be in vain. Follow this up, and 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 1 through 10, it says this, though that if the earthly tent, which is our house, is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. This body is going to be permanent. Right now, he's comparing, saying, what we have now is like a tent. When you have a tent, the wind can blow it, it can tap it, the sun can't, if you have one of those awnings, if you let the sun out there for a long, all of a sudden, it just kind of evaporates. It wears out, because it's a tent.
God says, I'm going to take you from a tent to a permanent building. A house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed in this house, we've grown, we're always complaining, I got a backache, I got this problem. So, we long to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, and as much as we have input it on, we're not be found naked.
For indeed, while we are in this tent, we've grown being burdened because we do not want to be unclothed, but be clothed so that what is mortal will be swallowed up. He's saying, we're going to have this permanent dwelling. Now he who has prepared us for this very purpose is God. God is the one who is doing it.
He gave to us the Spirit as a pledge. He made a promise that He's going to change us and give us a new body that is different and eternal. He says, in case you don't trust me, I'm giving you a down payment. I'm going to put my spirit in your worn out body that I'm going to change it. God only makes promises, He puts down down payments. God is a God of His Word. He doesn't need to do this, but He does it anyway.
Therefore always being of good courage, we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord. Then He says this very interesting thing, for we walk by faith, not by sight. I don't need to see my new body, I believe in.
My response, there used to be back in the days, people used preachers used to say, God said it. I believe it. God said it. God said it. God said it. God said it. God said it. God said it.
God said it. I don't need to do what God is going to do and He doesn't need my boat of approval. We walk by faith. We walk in this life knowing what God has promised us and we don't have to see it. We are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. We also have as our ambition whether at home or absent to be pleasing to Him. Do we or do we just live life?
Go from Sunday to Monday to Tuesday or do we live to be pleasing to Him? When we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompense for his deeds in the body, but showing what he has done was a good or bad. So there is an accountability of what we do.
Yes, there is grace that we are saved by grace. We are accountable for what we do in this body. There is something else he also does. In 2 Peter 1 verses 2-4, we says this. Recent peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and a scene that his divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and God in us through the true knowledge of Him who called us by his own glory and excellence. For by these things he has granted to us, precious and magnificent promises.
So that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by loss. God also said, not only will I give you a new body, I am going to give you a new nature. How expressed is in Romans some of the same feelings that we have. He goes, why is it that I do the things that I don't want to do and I don't do the things that I ought to do?
He goes, wretched man that I am because he understands that he has a earthly nature. But God has promised us that he is going to give us a new nature, a divine nature, one like him. Not only are we going to be in his image and the body would be in his image in the nature of who he is. What an awesome, awesome, precious and magnificent promise. Now open to this point, all these promises have kind of been heavenly.
We are looking forward to them. Someday this will happen and we have faith and we walk by faith and not by sight in these promises. But what about now? He has made some promises for the now.
So in Romans chapter 8, sorry, with verse 26, this, in the same way the Spirit also helps our weaknesses. But we do not know how to pray as we should. Heard himself intercedes for us with ronings too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts and knows what the mind of the Spirit is because he intercedes for the saints according to his will. I know you don't have the wisdom to know sometimes what you ought to be praying for.
What is the will of God, especially when we don't have it in a divine nature, we have our own selfish nature. So there are times we don't know. So he's going, that's okay. But as you want, the Holy Spirit will pray what it is God wants because he knows what God wants. And therefore he will change our requests into his. So it helps us pray effectively. It also does.
And it says, and we know that God causes all things that work together for good to those who love God into those who are called according to this purpose. He's saying, no matter what life gives you, no matter what heartache, no matter what difficulty, no matter what duty, I am going to take and work all things together for good if you love me and you're called according to my purpose. Now I'm going to say something that probably might shock you. When we experience some difficulty, some tragedy, and what we want to do is we want to try to figure out what that good is. And so something will happen bad and then we'll say, okay, well, God did this so that this good might happen.
So I'll give you a reality and then something that I haven't done, but I could just, my wife died. Personally, I think that's terrible for her. It's the best thing that ever happened to her.
But I understand for me, it was not good. I could justify her death and separation by saying, well, God has given me a ministry to minister to the widows and widowers. I want to be honest with you, that's not good enough.
A new ministry is not good enough to be separated from my wife. But God has some reason that that's good, not only in her life, but in mine. But I'm not going to make up what I'll let him work it out. And maybe I might know here or maybe it might not teach till I see him face to face what that good is, but I trust that it's good. So I don't want to make up good.
I just let him do the good. But the promise is, no, experience in life. He'll work it out. For those whom he foreign you, he also forklets and become conformed to the image of his son so that we would be the first born among men and brothers. He's going to make us like Jesus. And are these whom he predestined, he also calls.
And these whom he calls, he also justified. And these whom he justified, he also glorified. God is going through a step process. He's calling us. He's glorifying us. He's working in our lives.
That's his promise to us. He's working even when I don't see it. But shall we say to these things, if God is for us, it doesn't matter what giant you're facing, it just doesn't matter because God is for not if we're for God. If God is for us, then who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son, but delivered him over for us all with him also give us fully all things. He's telling us God is not going to be stingy with us. He's telling us that he's giving us these things because he's called us. He's justified us.
He's glorified us and he loves us. Therefore he's not a stingy father who will be a charge against God's elect. God is the one who's justified. When Satan tries to accuse you of something, you can say, I'm going to let my lawyer speak.
His name is Jesus. I understand the single case, but he's never represented an innocent man. I'm going to let Jesus counter what Satan does to accuse me. Jesus is simple answer, I paid it all. Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is who died, yes, rather who is raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Jesus intercedes for us.
Doesn't matter what a miserable... Jesus gets involved in us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or thord? Just that is written for we are being put to death all day. We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.
Look in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. Nothing. God's promise to us is that there is nothing we can do or nothing any bells can do to separate our His love.
He gave Jesus for us what's going to withhold. Oh, I can't forgive that, Son. He forgave everything. We aren't winners by the skin of our teeth. We are overwhelmingly conquerors, not because of our ability, but because of Him who loved us, who nothing can separate us from that love.
For I am convinced, I am not just persuaded, I am convinced to need their death, their life, their angels, their principalities, their things present, their things that come, their powers, their heights, their death, or any other creative thing will be. It is from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. You'll hear any other promise. Hear this one. God loves you with an everlasting love and nothing and no one and no power and no. And not even anything you can do can separate you from His love. If I am loved that much, how should I not just return that love because He loves me that much? But these aren't the only promises about life.
In Matthew 1820 it says this, for where two or three have gathered together in my name, I am there in their midst. And I enjoy going to football games especially to back to Kansas City and to see the chiefs play and one of the great things about it is like 95 percent of the stadium is filled with chief fans. And the other 5 percent, they've lost their way, but it's okay. But it's great because there's the whole crowd and they're into watching and they're wanting to help.
They're all young and screaming and even when somebody gets a first down, they'll say, in Kansas City, the whole stadium goes first down and they're all involved and it's great. But as great as that is, we have an assemble all 80,000 people to be with Jesus. We went there to see a football game. Which again is entertainment and good and whatever. So in just two or three. So if you're one, all you need is one.
Now we all kind of like with the stadium Christians and others just kind of tend to like the big show. So we like to go to big churches where they have great music programs and whatever. But there's not necessarily any guarantee that you, in that whole group of people, maybe I, but there's no guarantee that everybody's there because they want to be with Jesus. They like the music program or they like the pastor or they like whatever or to be in that church means that they get good business and so they need to be there. With that big church, no more significant. If you and one other person are maybe two, show up and say, I want to be with Jesus.
And guess what? Jesus is there. It is going to go up. Wait, I want to count on them. Not enough people. That was my time. No.
Two or three are gathered in his name. He's in the midst. What a wonderful promise.
Also in this life, he says this in Matthew chapter 9. Peter kind of complaining because Jesus has been teaching and whatever and he's going, well, Jesus, we've given up basically our families and our our fishing business and all these things come to follow you. What do we have the show for it? And Jesus says that everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or farms for my name's sake will receive many times as much and will eternal life.
Jesus, there is nothing that you give up that I won't reward you many times full more and on top of that eternal life. So when your friend may abandon you because of your faith, Jesus is going to give you more friends. If your family authorizes you because of your faith, it's one of the great things about churches. We're supposed to be brothers.