Does anyone really prefer a “maybe”? It depends on the question! Do I have cancer? Maybe. Will I win the lottery? Maybe. Those two “maybes” conjure very different emotions. A “maybe” could be yes, and it could be no. "Maybe" means the person giving an answer is not prepared to give an answer, or feels the person asking the question is not prepared for an emphatic answer. There are times when God’s answer is “maybe”, especially when it comes to specific prayer requests of provision and need, but not when it comes to God’s promises to us. When it comes to God’s covenant faithfulness, there is no "maybe". If you were able to speak face to face with Jesus on this side of death, and you were able to ask if God would be faithful to keep you in his care, Jesus would not answer “maybe”.
God's Plan > My Plan
2 Corinthians 1:19-22 says,
"For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee."
The context of this statement is important to fully seeing its beauty. Paul had desired to visit the church in Corinth, but his plans were not concrete because of extenuating circumstances.
If you travel anywhere during the holiday season, then you have experienced this. There is a longing to get to your destination and see your loved ones, but you are at the mercy of the weather, other travelers, the airlines if you are flying, cold and flu season and perhaps a dozen other factors. Paul stated in verse 18 that the travel plans were never the guarantee of what God wanted to do. God has a sovereign plan, and that plan can not be thwarted. God’s sovereignty in our lives means nothing to our hope if it does not inform our hope.
Paul was illustrating the certainty of God’s faithfulness by contrasting His sovereignty with our frailty. Our best attempts to control our lives are still a rolling of the dice! Solomon, in his astounding wisdom, said it this way in Proverbs 16:32-33:
"Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city. The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord."
We tend to get angry when we can’t control outcomes,but our anger and control are pointless when we consider God’s sovereignty!
What Paul wanted the church at Corinth to understand was that God is perpetually keeping the promises made to us in keeping with his sovereign plan, not our personal desires. Look at the passage again:
"For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee."
Paul wanted them to understand that whether he made it to Corinth or not, he loved the believers in Corinth dearly. He didn’t want them to interpret his love by his visible and physical presence. He wanted them to view God’s love in the same way, not judged on the basis of what they could see, feel or experience.
God’s sovereignty in our lives means nothing to our hope if it does not inform our hope.
John Piper made this statement about these verses: “So Paul is saying: My heart is not divided toward you because God's heart is not divided toward you. If you belong to Christ by faith, then everything God could possibly give you for your good he has signed over to your account in Christ. You hear the same answer at every point: Is this promise in my account? Yes. Is this promise in my account? Yes. Is this blessing in my account? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. All the promises of God are YES in Christ.” (Piper, 2024)
Paul guaranteed God’s faithfulness based on the faithful work of Jesus Christ. Paul is teaching us an important Christological truth: if you want to understand God’s personal relationship of faithfulness with you then get to know Jesus Christ! There are two ways that God uses to help us understand his own character through Jesus Christ.
The Whole Counsel Of God
The first way God uses to help us understand his own character is the preaching of the whole counsel of God found in studying the whole Bible.
Paul, in speaking to the elders of the Ephesians church, reminded them that they needed to guard against wolves by preaching the whole counsel of God. He says in Acts 20:26-28,
"Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood."
I had a well-meaning individual ask me if I was moving away from exegetical teaching since I am not going through only one book of the Bible this year. It was a great question that is worth answering publicly. Hermeneutics is the study of the interpretation of literature, or how we read it and understand it. Homiletics is the study of the presentation of literature, or how we explain it. As a pastor, each Sunday I exercise both a hermeneutic and a homiletic. I also employ both preaching and teaching. Preaching makes the profound things of Scripture simple. Teaching makes the simple things of scripture profound.
There are times as your pastor I must directly address an issue by turning topically to a passage to show you from Scripture how to address your needs. This was actually the primary approach to preaching and teaching utilized by the apostles, and Jesus himself. The Bible is an incredible field manual to aid in our sanctification. Most of the time I will shepherd you through a book of the Bible, being careful to not avoid difficult texts that don’t resonate favorably with our culture. This is one way we preach the whole counsel of God.
The third way that I must and do preach and teach is by teaching the great narratives of Scripture, and there are dozens of narratives to choose from. Meta-narratives teach us how the whole Bible connects throughout history, after all, this Bible we possess is 66 books written and collected over thousands of years, yet every book connects with every other book in dozens of ways. This is another important way to preach and teach the whole counsel of God.
Last year I flew out west on a clear day. It was amazing to watch the landscape change and to see how it all connects. I watched the trees give way to plains, which eventually gave way to sand and rock. It was like flying over a topographical map of the US. Studying the narratives of Scripture feels very similar. The kingdom narrative, garden narrative, scattering and gathering narrative, and blood atonement narrative are just a few on the list that connect the east and west, or Old Testament and New Testament. In fact, many theologians who teach this way have reminded believers that the New Testament is concealed in the Old Testament, and the Old Testament is revealed in the New Testament.
This particular study that I’m endeavoring to lead you through will be a study in the theological topic of Christology. My goal is to show you where Jesus is in every book of the Bible and how he was the fulfillment of every covenant God has made with mankind.
Maxiumus in the film Gladiator said, “What we do in life echoes in eternity.” What Jesus did for us in obedience to God has changed the world forever, but that work was not only done in the Gospels. Jesus was involved right from the beginning and will be involved at the very end of this age. I pray that you will find great hope and confidence in God the Father through the image of God’s Son.
If you want to understand God’s faithfulness then get to know Jesus Christ!
The Church of God
The second way God uses to help us understand his own character is he church of God when gathered to reflect Jesus Christ to the nations. Hebrews 10:23-25 says,
"Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near."
When someone truly searches for Jesus, they find his church, for we are the body of Christ given to reach the nations. That’s not to say someone can only find Jesus in a church building. What I am saying is that when you fall in love with the groom, his bride comes with. When you love someone, you don’t just love their face, you love all of that person.
John Owen, in a sermon about worship in which he addressed the issue of ornate church buildings and aesthetic beauty made this statement: “Just as the structures of tabernacle and temple were raised of old, so those assemblies are raised in their spiritual union in and under Christ as head. And they are a temple - a holy temple - holy with ‘true holiness,’ as the apostle writes (Eph. 4:24); not a typical or relative holiness, but real holiness, such as the Lord’s soul delights in.” (Owen, 134). What Owen was saying was that while we can appreciate the building we meet in as a church, Jesus is appreciating his bride, the people themselves gathered in worship.
I once had a very close friend who married a women who did not like me or want me around. The reality is that I didn’t much enjoy her company either. As you can imagine, that friend and I aren’t very close any more and only talk once or twice every few years. He chose his bride, and no one should fault him for that. If I wanted to remain close to him, I would have had to be in relationship with her as well! Similarly, we want to convince ourselves that Jesus without church will work, and God tells us in Scripture very clearly that a relationship with Jesus is not healthy without his body and bride! Why?
The author of Hebrews gives us here a chain connection of influence:
We hold on to hope by remembering God’s faithfulness.
Holding fast to the hope of God’s faithfulness leads to good works.
Good works connects us to the body of believers consistently and regularly.
Connecting with the body of believers encourages us which leads us back to hope.
The apostle John talked about loving the body with more severe language than I believe is worth being reminded of. He says in 1 John 2:9-11:
"Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes."
He continues in 1 John 4:20-21:
"If anyone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother."
A Bride Made Beautiful
My brother is a tribal missionary who resides with his wife and 8 children in remote Papua, New Guinea. I once asked him what it was like for the tribe he ministers to upon his return from the states. He told me that they can hear the helicopter from a long way off. They immediately start gathering food and shouting to their neighbors to get ready to head to the main village gathering place (which for some is many miles) so that they can be ready for the teacher's talks. They run through the jungle, kids and food in tow, to gather with the bride of Christ in a little grass hut. They don’t care about the trappings of worship that we Americans care about, they just want to hear from God, and God looks at that little jungle bride with the same wink in his eye that he looks at the bride in America with, for she is beautiful. What makes her beautiful is the groom, Jesus Christ, that name that is being echoed throughout eternity and resounding to the remotest places with God’s faithfulness.
References
Piper, J. (2024). All The Promises Of God Are Yes In Christ. Retrieved from https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/all-the-promises-of-god-are-yes-in-christ
John Owen. Gospel Ministry (Banner of Truth, Edinburgh. 2023)
This particular study that I’m endeavoring to lead you through will be a study in the theological topic of Christology. My goal is to show you where Jesus is in every book of the Bible and how he was the fulfillment of every covenant God has made with mankind.
**Can't wait Pastor!