Advent Week One: Hope - Trusting God’s Promise of Blessing

Advent Week One: Hope - Trusting God’s Promise of Blessing

Jeremiah 33:14 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.”

We struggle to trust promises. We doubt promises for one simple reason: broken promises. We have had many people break their promises to us. Politicians, contractors, parents, friends, children, spouses, even pastors, have all broken their promises to us. So, when we hear a promise from God, we often do not trust it much. Talk is cheap, we think.

The problem then is that, not trusting his promise, we anxiously strive to secure our life and future happiness by our own weary efforts. Trying to secure our own happiness, our life feels as though it were under constant threat. The threat of a curse looms around every corner in our minds: problems with our health, work, finances, and relationships. We live waiting for the threat to be realized. Anxious and fearful. 

But that is not the way we are to live. We are to live trusting God’s promise, his promise to bless us and not to curse us. We can trust his promise precisely because God is different from us. His word is sure. “So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Is. 55:11).

We can rest in God’s promise. What he says he does. Every word, every promise of the Lord will come true. His promise is so sure because, as God, he has both the desire and the power to fulfill his promise. He is a God of promises, it is his nature to deal with us by promise. He assures us with his promise. He guides us with his promise. He protects us with his promise. 

We can trust his promise far more than we can trust any tangible reality. We may trust in wealth, but that can be stolen in an instant. We may trust in military might, but every army is eventually defeated. We may trust in our physical health, but a single cancer cell could destroy it. We may trust in our friends, but their affections waver like waves on the sea.

We cannot trust the things of the world that bid us to hope in them, but we can trust God’s promise. What is his promise to us? “In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land” (Jer. 33:15). He promises that the King who rules over us now will return to rule the world with perfect justice and righteousness. In short, that one day, everything bad will be undone and everything good we have hoped for will come true. 

We must come to trust the reality of his promise of blessing: Our present joy and future happiness do not depend upon our ability to wrestle them from an uncaring world, but upon his promise. Whatever troubles the world sends our way, Christ promises that he has already overcome the world. We do not live under the threat of a curse, but under God’s promise of blessing.

Advent reminds us of this simple fact: We are The People of Promise. Our God promises—he has given his word—that we are now and forever under Christ’s blessed Kingship. Advent invites us to hope in this promise. Advent is a call to live each day as a people of promised blessing. 

God has said: “I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” We are not people under threat of curse. We are those whom God Almighty has promised to bless. Place your hope firmly in God’s promise. His promise, you can trust.